Facial recognition error prompts police to arrest Asian man for burglary 100 miles away

"I was very angry, because the kid looked about 10 years younger than me, said Choudhury, who wears a beard. Everything was different. Skin was lighter. Suspect looked 18 years old. His nose was bigger. He had no facial hair. His eyes were different. His lips were smaller than mine. I just assumed that the investigative officer saw that I was a brown person with curly hair and decided to arrest me."

"UK police forces use an algorithm procured by the Home Office from Cognitec, a German company. It runs about 25,000 monthly searches against around 19m police mugshots held on the UK-wide police national database. Facial matches should be treated as intelligence, not fact, according to the National Police Chiefs' Council."

"The technology was revealed in December to produce a far higher rate of false positives for black (5.5 %) and Asian (4.0 %) faces than for white faces (0.04 %) at certain settings, according to Home Office commissioned research. Police and crime commissioners warned of concerning in-built bias."

Alvi Choudhury, a 26-year-old software engineer, was arrested and detained for nearly 10 hours based on a facial recognition match to a burglary suspect 100 miles away in Milton Keynes. Thames Valley police used automated facial recognition software procured from Cognitec, a German company, which runs approximately 25,000 monthly searches against 19 million police mugshots. Choudhury noted the CCTV footage showed a noticeably younger man with distinctly different features. Home Office research revealed the technology produces significantly higher false positive rates for Black faces (5.5%) and Asian faces (4.0%) compared to white faces (0.04%), demonstrating concerning built-in racial bias in the system.

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