Big data is constantly making our lives better by helping businesses to serve us better while becoming more efficient, pinpointing trends in large datasets, and even improving healthcare. Its also definitely making criminals lives harder in many ways, making our communities safer overall. From helping police to identify crime patterns in cities to scanning large databases for specific information, big data is revolutionizing criminal justice, and making it a lot harder for people to get away with breaking the law. Fingerprint analysis has long been an important part of forensic evidence to build a case, but thanks to big data and artificial intelligence, theres a newer tool that can help identify suspects: facial recognition.
How it Works
If youre out and about these days, theres a good chance youre getting caught on video somewhere. Surveillance cameras arent just for gas stations these days, and they can be helpful witnesses in criminal activity. With enhancement technology available, its often an easy way to identify a suspect. However, calling on the public to identify individuals in these photos often wastes precious timetime for criminals to skip town or change their appearance.
Facial recognition in criminal justice relies on a databasea big data dataset that contains photographs of potential matches. The software uses facial measurements to compare existing photos to the crime scene photosmaking calculations in a fraction of a second to find the correct photo, if it exists. When a match is found, its flagged, allowing law enforcement to do a manual evaluation and see information about the suspect. This technology can also now be used by officers in the field, to perform preliminary checks using mobile devices.
How Accurate is Facial Recognition?
Youve probably used facial recognition in your daily life, but you might not have thought about it much. If youve ever tagged a friend in a Facebook photo, you may have noticed that you dont have to do much work: most faces are automatically recognized and tagged. Some people find this unsettling, but the advancement of the technology is in law enforcements favor: they can use the technology to identify everyone from small-time criminals to terrorism suspects. An Israeli startups software was used in the investigation following the Paris terrorist attacks in 2015, identifying 9 of the 11 people involved, despite the fact that only 3 had criminal records. Many other investigations, including cases of identity fraud, have also used the technology successfully to apprehend suspects. Pierce County in Washington State has used facial recognition with great success, boasting a 94% accuracy rate in the first candidate spot.
Privacy Concerns
As of now, fingerprinting is only done in specific circumstances, such as when someone is arrested, or when they take up a government position. Individuals must give consent in most cases for fingerprinting (or be in custody), but photos are easier to acquire. Concerns about privacy surround facial recognition, since agencies often have access to photos from government sources besides corrections, such as licensing departments, to build up their databases. In 2016, the FBI had access to about 411.9 million images, most of which were of people with no criminal record. While this has many people concerned about privacy issues and facial recognition, these photos are already in government databases, and could be used to help identify individuals prior to recognition softwareits just simpler now. The Paris terrorist investigations show that even individuals with no prior criminal record can pose a threatand should be apprehended if at all possible.
Keeping Us Safe
Memory is fickle, and so are witness recollections. Facial recognition software may not be perfect yet, but it can help law enforcement identify suspects much more quickly and accurately than the public can, and help prevent wrongful accusations. The result of these technological advances are safer communities and more compelling evidence to report in the courtroom. As artificial intelligence and big data continue to evolve, we can look forward to even better crime-fighting tools than we have today.
