by Anthony Accurso
A June 24, 2020, article in The New York Times by Kashmir Hill recounts the wrongful imprisonment of a Detroit man due to misuse of facial-recognition software.
In January 2020, Robert Julian-Borchak Williams was working at an automotive supply company when he received what he thought was a prank phone call directing him to turn himself into the Detroit P.D. When he arrived home from work, he quickly learned it was not a prank, as he was handcuffed before his wife and two daughters.
He was booked Thursday afternoon, which included a mugshot, fingerprinting, and DNA sampling.
Around noon the next day, during his interrogation, he was shown a blurry photo from a security camera taken at a Shinola store where five timepieces worth $3,800 total were shoplifted in October 2018.
“Is this you?” asked one detective.
The second photo, a close-up of the first, also was on the table. Williams held it up to his face to contrast how much it definitely did not look like him.
“No, this is not me,” said Williams. “You think all Black men look alike?”
Williams turned over another paper on the table, which revealed a photo of the suspect ...
by Anthony Accurso
Minnesota officials have used a variety of digital surveillance tools to track protestors, but now they openly admit to using contact-tracing apps to do so.
According to Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington, officials in the state have been using contact-tracing to map protestor affiliations and movements. This has led officials to conclude that much of the protest activity is being fueled by people from the “outside coming in.” Harrington was circumspect about which apps or processes commonly used for contact-tracing are now being used against protestors, though a Twitter feed titled “Minnesota Contact Tracing,” which has been leaking police activities, did specify that officials are contact-tracing arrestees.
This is just the latest tool of big tech to be deployed against law-abiding citizens. Minneapolis Police and the Minnesota Fusion Center have also been employing other well-known tech to track citizens. Briefcam, Ring doorbell cameras, Axon police bodycams, ShotSpotter, and license plate readers collect hundreds of thousands of hours of video footage that is analyzed by software such as Clearview AI to identify individuals through facial recognition algorithms.
CCTV footage is also now being fed through Arxys Milestone software, which uses “video motion detection” and “video analytics” to ...
by Anthony Accurso
Researchers have developed a new system that could be used to ensure that the evidence processed in a laboratory is the same evidence that was collected in the field (e.g., from a crime scene).
Engineers from Duke University and NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering have demonstrated a method of adding a sample of artificially created genetic material to evidence, which will allow lab workers to match the samples processed in the lab. “If you think about conventional encryption techniques, like security for a smartphone, there’s usually a passcode that only one person knows, “said Mohamed Ibrahim, a system-on-chip designer at Intel Corp. and a Ph.D. graduate of Duke. “Our idea is to inject non-harmful material into genetic samples immediately when they are collected in the field that act as a similar password. This would ensure that the samples are authentic when they reach the processing stage.”
Most genetic identification is done using polymerase chain reaction (“PCR”), a technique for sequencing a few short sections of human DNA, which can be used to accurately identify the person who left biological material at the scene of a crime. The FBI has identified 13 sites on the human genome which, ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
SpyCloud, a company that collects private information on people, mostly info exposed through data breaches, sells access to its databases to anyone willing to pay for it, including law enforcement. While it currently operates in an area of law mostly untouched by precedent, people should be ...
by Anthony Accurso
A study from the UK found that triaging digital evidence can lead to oversights and misinterpretation when the process is not designed or implemented in a way that guards against such failures.
The data, published in the journal Policing and using data collected between January 2017 and ...
by Anthony Accurso
The Supreme Court of California reversed a judgment of the Court of Appeal by holding that a defendant need not be released from custody in order to demonstrate living an ‘‘honest and upright life,” a prerequisite to having his conviction expunged.
Misael Vences Maya was convicted of ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Police departments are using the coronavirus pandemic to expand their use of surveillance tools in the name of public health and safety. Privacy advocates are concerned about the encroachment of the carceral state on civil liberties, especially in predominantly Black and Brown communities.
In New York ...
by Anthony Accurso
It’s no secret that our digital devices, especially our phones, are collecting troves of data about us — our preferences, habits, and movements. Many of us understand this is the price we pay for “free” services, such as email by Google and social networking by Facebook. What ...
by Anthony Accurso
The Supreme Court of Minnesota reversed a Court of Appeals decision requiring a defendant to register as a predatory offender because proving the elements of the out-of-state conviction does not necessarily prove a violation of Minnesota law. Additionally, the Court announced rules for analyzing whether out-of-state convictions ...
by Anthony Accurso
The Supreme Court of the State of Minnesota affirmed a decision by the Court of Appeals, which held the district court erred in denying a defendant’s request for non-identifying information about a confidential informant (“CI”).
In February 2017, law enforcement filed an affidavit requesting a search warrant ...
