Facing facts

Want to catch the right person for a crime? Rely on evidence other than eyewitness identification. The Innocence Project reports that mistaken memories have contributed to 7 in 10 wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA evidence.

State Sen. Brad Hoylman never got the memo. He wants a sweeping ban on the use of face recognition technology by police all across New York, a prohibition that would force cops to fall back on flawed human recollections.

Hoylman claims his radical step is needed because we are hurtling at full speed into a dystopian future that “threatens to end every New Yorker’s ability to walk down the street anonymously.” He’s slaying imaginary dragons.

The NYPD does compare images gleaned from cameras trained at crime scenes or other evidence to a limited database of mugshot photos from prior arrests. (It also uses the tool to help identify otherwise nameless victims.)

That proves remarkably useful. Without face recognition, it’s quite possible the rapist who allegedly tried to rape a woman at knifepoint would never have been found. Nor would cops have been able to locate the man who left rice cookers in subways, triggering a terror scare. Or zero in on two suspects in a Diamond District heist.

Critics are right that unauthorized use of the Clearview AI software, which mines social media photos, shouldn’t be allowed. And that the technology has had accuracy challenges — though it’s getting better, and is already eons better than lineups and photo arrays.

We sure don’t want cops or marketers to be able to track people everywhere; legislators should craft careful rules governing the technology’s use. But a blanket ban is middleschool-level stuff.