AI in Policing

Technology has never been colourblind. It’s time to abolish notions of “universal” users of software. This is an overview on racial justice in tech and in AI that considers how systemic change must happen for technology to be support equity.

This video is an in depth panel discussion of the issues uncovered in the ‘Unmasking Facial Recognition’ report from WebRootsDemocracy. This report found that facial recognition technology use is likely to exacerbate racist outcomes in policing and revealed that London’s Metropolitan Police failed to carry out an Equality Impact Assessment before trialling the technology at […]

As protests against police brutality and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement continue in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, protection against mass surveillance has become top of mind. This article explains how make-up can be used both as a way to evade facial recognition systems, but also as an art form.

There’s software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it’s biased against blacks. This is an article detailing a software which is used to predict the likelihood of recurring criminality. It uses case studies to demonstrate the racial bias prevalent in the software used to predict the ‘risk’ of further crimes. Even for […]

A New Jersey man was accused of shoplifting and trying to hit an officer with a car. He is the third known black man to be wrongfully arrested based on face recognition.

Whilst some believe AI will increase police and sentencing objectivity, others fear it will exacerbate bias. For example, the over-policing of minority communities in the past has generated a disproportionate number of crimes in some areas, which are passed to algorithms, which in turn reinforce over-policing.

Facial recognition is not the next generation of CCTV. Whilst CCTV takes pictures, facial recognition takes measurements. Measurements of the distance between your eyes, the length of your nose, the shape of your face. In this sense, facial recognition is the next generation of fingerprinting. It is a highly intrusive form of surveillance which everyone […]

In their zeal and earnest desire to protect individual privacy, policymakers run the risk of stifling innovation. The author makes the case that using facial recognition to prevent terrorism is justified as our world is becoming more dangerous every day; hence, policymakers should err on the side of public safety.

The UK Court of Appeal has determined that the use of a face-recognition system by South Wales Police was “unlawful”, which could have ramifications for the widespread use of such technology across the UK. The UK Court of Appeal unanimously decided against a face-recognition system used by South Wales Police.

UK police forces are largely adopting AI technologies, in particular facial recognition and predictive policing, without public consultation. This article alerts about UK police using facial recognition and predictive policing without conducting public consultations. It also calls for transparency and input from the public about how those technologies are being used.

Algorithms used for predictive policing rely on datasets which are inherently biased because of historically over- or under-policing certain communities. This results in the amplification of those biases.

A good summary of the differences between predictive analytics – used in AI – and traditional methods, in terms of methods and impact.