Technology is America’s vaccine for the racism virus. Facial recognition
America’s on edge again with a record of mass shootings this year and George Floyd’s trial. However, 2 unarmed fatal shootings by police in less than a week are creating more unrest. The media divisiveness is in full effect and grows in deception as the seasons get warmer. People are looting during a pandemic, again..And today there was another mass shooting with 8 being killed. It’s as if the closer we get to surviving the end of the pandemic there’s more fear and division to incite us. What will compensate for humans’ ability to solve racism? Here’s why technology is America’s vaccine for the racism virus. Facial recognition.
Has the country given up on how to solve the crime? This question needs to be taken seriously. People are worried about automation stealing jobs and taking over the healthcare and service industries. But what about Crime? Ever since mass surveillance was introduced in the early 2000s to lower crime police haven’t looked back. The popularity of CSI and forensic didn’t help either. Amateur murders had a blueprint on how to leave little to no evidence for a crime. But this talk doesn’t make headlines because it’s not race or sensationalized. The inability to solve the crime and rely on technology is just a big of an issue as police injustice, if not more.
The majority of murders in the inner cities of America go unsolved. Recently we’ve seen the digidog in the Bronx who will surveillance rooms before police enter. Also, we’ve covered the traffic-assisted robocop whose creator wants to ensure safety for the police and those being pulled over. For some reason, no amount of police training or lack thereof and proper vetting can prevent police from killing unarmed black people. Regardless of your opinion on these matters is the media’s intention to divide the people with these shootings. This is where facial recognition comes in.
If racism is the virus that America has yet to solve, technology will be the method of social distancing and vaccination. In this case facial recognition
Facial recognition helps systematic oppression on several fronts. First, it makes the police jobs easier to solve the crime, or it makes it appear that way to us. For example; the police can use bias facial recognition to charge the wrong person with a crime. The person will proclaim their innocence, but because of the public trust in technology, many won’t believe them. Others will use race as a deciding factor. As a result, the police can use technology to wrongfully charge those and never solve the crime. If the police are really adamant about solving crime, would so many unarmed people be getting killed? Facial recognition is another band-aid on a surgical issue.
For instance; recent studies have shown that facial recognition discriminates largely against black and asian demographics. Facial recognition is only as good as the data it collects. Therefore, the morals of using and collecting data by law enforcement are of the utmost importance.
The new lawsuit that shows facial recognition is officially a civil rights issue
Robert Williams was wrongfully accused by police of committing a crime due to a faulty facial recognition match. Williams is calling for the ban of facial recognition Williams, a Detroit native was arrested in his driveway and accused of stealing watches. The police told him the computer matched him. Williams responded “I hope you don’t think all black people look alike. This same inability to distinguish black people is what many say is the same reason for police shootings. Many black people feel as if they’re treated as a threat because of their looks. This is the true definition of stereotype. Who is putting the data into the facial recognition in the camera that matched Robert Williams is the question
In conclusion, Facial recognition is another admittance of the “system” being unable to solve a crime. It also gives more ammunition to oppress people of color depending on the algorithm. A recent study showed that Asians and Blacks were 10-100 more like to have facial failure than whites. If crime is already too hard to solve, do we need incompetent technology to further complicate it?
Whats your take on facial recognition and its usage in solving “crime”? Let us know your thoughts below.