U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib told Detroit police Chief James Craig he should employ only black people on the department’s facial recognition team because “non-African Americans think African-Americans all look the same.”
Police officials invited Tlaib to the facility inside Public Safety Headquarters to see how Detroit uses facial recognition software, after she criticized the technology in an Aug. 20 tweet. The congresswoman wrote: “@detroitpolice You should probably rethink this whole facial recognition bull—-.”
@RashidaTlaib Before you criticize the software, come to our Real Time Crime Center to see how we @detroitpolice responsibly use it in efforts to identify criminals involved in violent crimes. Let’s set a date. https://t.co/aR7DOjQe2a
— Detroit Police Dept. (@detroitpolice) August 20, 2019
The tour, which lasted more than an hour, was often tense, with Tlaib and Craig wrangling over how the department uses the software, privacy issues, and concerns that the technology misidentifies a disproportionate number of darker-skinned people. A major point of contention: whether only black civilians should work in the crime center analyzing photos flagged by the software.
Craig said all officers and civilian employees go through mandatory implicit bias training.
“That’s something we train for, and it’s valuable training, but to say people should be barred from working somewhere because of their skin color? That’s racist.”
Editorial: Rashida Tlaib should wake up
Instead of apologizing, Tlaib directed her office to issue a flurry of studies raising concerns about the racial aspects of facial recognition technology. The complaints may be valid. But the studies don’t change the inappropriateness of Tlaib’s remarks.
Racism can rise from a lot of places, including from those who build their careers railing against it.
Tlaib, who considers herself among Congress’ most woke members, should wake up to that reality.
The above is an excerpt from the Detroit News
Following the tour Tlaib went on to post studies supporting her point on her Twitter account.
I'm sharing some scholarly research on facial recognition w/ @detroitpolice to continue the dialogue. While facial recognition identifies a white man’s gender 99% of the time, it misidentifies darker-skinned females up to 35% of the time. https://t.co/GmvKgMQDML 1/7
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) October 2, 2019
Another study in 2018 from the National Institute of Standards and Technology found that facial recognition falsely matches Black women’s faces 10 times more frequently than white women. This is a deeply flawed technology. https://t.co/gbAq30R6GU 2/7
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) October 2, 2019
A Northwestern University study showed that we have better memories of faces of the same race because we’re more perceptive of same-race faces, and that we are less likely to recognize or distinguish between other-race faces. https://t.co/7AGbfhOIPq 4/7
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) October 2, 2019
A study at the University of Glasgow suggests that our brains encode other-race faces primarily according to the racial group they belong to, rather than by distinguishing features. https://t.co/3vRP6VD0hw 5/7
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) October 2, 2019
At the end of the day, I was elected to serve my residents, and I cannot in good conscience sit by while inaccurate facial recognition technology is deployed in ways that run the risk of false arrests and overpolicing. We need a real dialogue here. 7/7
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) October 2, 2019
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