this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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Cops Used DNA to Predict a Suspect’s Face—and Tried to Run Facial Recognition on It | Leaked records reveal what appears to be the first known instance of a police department attempting to use faci...::Police around the US say they're justified to run DNA-generated 3D models of faces through facial recognition tools to help crack cold cases. Everyone but the cops thinks that’s a bad idea.

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[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 80 points 9 months ago (5 children)

“As long as we can pin it on someone…”

[–] ULS@lemmy.ml 19 points 9 months ago

They just look for anything to make the case... Ruining lives. It's so dystopian and sad.

[–] Mango@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

Been the someone. It's shit. ACAB.

[–] neidu2@feddit.nl 7 points 9 months ago

Police metrics are governed by clearance stats, and pinning a crime on someone is enough for a case to count as "solved". If it goes to court, that's all they need, and it doesn't matter if the suspect is found guilty.

[–] grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

Exactly. Just so very dumb.

[–] aaaantoine@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

There's no way this would have been admissable as evidence on its own.

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Heh, you wish. All it takes is one corrupt judge.

[–] hostops@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago

Well they do have a DNA of a suspect. It may be enough to get court order of DNA extraction of a subject. And matching DNA is definitely enough to get someone behind bars.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 30 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

According to a report released in September by the US Government Accountability Office, only 5 percent of the 196 FBI agents who have access to facial recognition technology from outside vendors have completed any training on how to properly use the tools. The report notes that the agency also lacks any internal policies for facial recognition to safeguard against privacy and civil liberties abuses.

How is this allowed?

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

Because society is a farse that is only held together by the adhesive of the few people in positions of power who care to keep it alive over warring tribes? Either that or everyone is exhausted and ready to return to cave drawings.

[–] dirthawker0@lemmy.world 27 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's far too vague to be reliable. You notice how easily the facial construction became termed a "photo" as in "We have a photo of the suspect." DNA is not going to have info on hair length, facial hair, if the suspect dyed their hair, or weight.

[–] 7heo@lemmy.ml 7 points 9 months ago

Any face mods, scars, etc will also render that totally useless. I can't wait to have to register any cosmetic surgery with the state police...

[–] Land_Strider@lemmy.world 22 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Algorithm printing the pig face as the most likely suspect:

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 16 points 9 months ago

Algorithm: "Police are much more likely to commit a crime."

Police: "We've stopped using the algorithm because of inherit flaws in the code."

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 17 points 9 months ago

Yay, the Department of Pre-crime.

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

IMO, the only valid use of DNA-based face generation would be to rule out existing suspects, not to label random people as suspects based on their faces alone.

[–] Zron@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I hate to say it, but there’s a better way to eliminate suspects based on our current DNA technology.

If all your suspects are black, and the dna is from a someone with Irish heritage, it’s probably not any of the black people.

Trying to reconstruct someone’s face seems really inaccurate, considering I have the same DNA as I did 10 years ago, but I’ve had high school friends who have walked passed me without recognizing me because I lost a lot of weight and grew a beard since they last saw me.

As much as racial profiling is shitty, it’s way easier to tell someone’s ethnicity from dna than it is to reconstruct their whole face. You can then use that to narrow down a list of suspects, similar to how we used to use blood type analysis before dna was a thing.

[–] Rootiest@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

While I'm as skeptical as you are, I don't think people recognizing you is a good metric.

A better test would be if an AI trained on your younger face could accurately and reliably identify you with your adult face.

The way AI and human face recognition work are different from each other. An AI may be able to identify you based on markers that human recognition doesn't account for

[–] ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com 1 points 9 months ago

AI does a scary good job of recognizing age different photos sometimes. I've set up a couple self hosted photo management apps that contain such functions (photo prism and immich) and had surprising results. After feeding it a number of recent digital pictures I went on to put on n a bunch of old scanned photos from 10+ years earlier, and with a reasonably good accuracy it was able to dicern the difference in baby pictures between two kids to match with the older pictures.

[–] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago

Frenology 2.0, only difference is the science being misused to fuel it has bigger words and shinier tech.

[–] chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The vast majority of the world's population is feeding this entire mass surveillance system with their valuable personal and behavioral data, often without realizing that this system they feed is already oppressing themselves in the present. All in exchange for exaggerated convenience

[–] maynarkh@feddit.nl 1 points 9 months ago

iF yOu HaVe NoThInG tO hIdE

[–] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 4 points 9 months ago

It's a cold case of a single murder from 30 years ago. I thought they would use it on something more unique. Guess they thought it's a way to silently normalize it via cases that are dead ends anyway to then bring it into a use on more recent stuff.

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Archive link to bypass the paywall.

Edit: on reading the article, I'm curious to know if anyone has actually gotten arrested or charged with a crime based on an algorithmically generated face which is then scanned though facial detection software.

[–] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago

That looks like the most average man possible. Surely no one will look like that except the perp.

[–] Steve 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

This is an interesting idea. Absolutely worth looking into. But I wouldn't approve it to use on active cases until the false positive rate was below 1:1000.

[–] diabeetusman@lemmynsfw.com 13 points 9 months ago

That would mean ~300k false positives with every search.

[–] neptune@dmv.social 11 points 9 months ago

Nature VS nurture heavily implies this will never ever work