New Facial Recognition Test Falsely Misidentified CA Lawmakers with Mugshots.

The ACLU, which wants to ban facial recognition technology in police body cameras, says that its own tests of the technology misidentified and flagged 26 California lawmakers as Mugshots. The experiment follows a similar test conducted last year, where 28 members of Congress -- the majority also people of color -- were mistakenly identified as criminals.
In a demonstration by the American Civil Liberties Union, about 26 California lawmakers were misidentified by face-matching software built by Amazon, putting the rate of a mismatch at about 1 in 5. More than half of the falsely matched lawmakers were people of color, according to the ACLU. Last year, the organization conducted a similar test that misidentified 28 members of Congress. In those results, they found that the program was more inaccurate with woman and people of color.

"Facial recognition-enabled police body cameras would be a disaster for communities and their civil rights, regardless of the technology's accuracy," said Matt Cagle, Technology and Civil Liberties Attorney, ACLU of Northern California.

"Even if this technology was accurate, which it is not, face recognition-enabled body cameras would facilitate massive violations of Californians civil rights."