Wrongful Arrest Exposes Failures in One of the Oldest Police Face-Recognition Tools in the US
Wrongful Arrest Exposes Failures in One of the Oldest Police Face-Recognition Tools in the US
一起错误逮捕事件揭露了美国最古老警用人脸识别工具的缺陷
A Florida man was wrongfully arrested for attempting to illegally lure a child after police relied on a face-recognition match that was inaccurate, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, even though he lived more than 300 miles from the scene and says he had never set foot in the city where the crime took place. 根据周三提交的一份诉讼，佛罗里达州一名男子因警方依赖不准确的人脸识别匹配结果，被错误地指控试图非法诱拐儿童。尽管该男子居住在距离案发地 300 多英里之外，且声称从未踏足过案发城市，但他仍遭到了错误逮捕。
Robert Dillon, a 52-year-old commercial crabber from Fort Myers, was arrested after FACES—a face-recognition system operated by Florida’s Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office—matched his face against a photo of a man on a computer screen taken with a cell phone. The system returned a “93 percent match on facial features,” according to police-investigatory notes. The scores it emits represent how much two images look alike to the algorithm. Not how likely it is that they show the same person. 52 岁的罗伯特·狄龙（Robert Dillon）是来自迈尔斯堡的一名商业捕蟹人。在佛罗里达州皮内拉斯县警长办公室运营的人脸识别系统 FACES 将他的脸与一张用手机拍摄的电脑屏幕照片进行匹配后，他被逮捕了。根据警方的调查记录，该系统给出了“面部特征 93% 匹配”的结果。系统输出的分数仅代表算法认为两张图像的相似程度，并不代表它们是同一人的可能性。
FACES holds tens of millions of Florida mug shots and driver’s license photos and is one of the longest-running police face-recognition databases in the United States. FACES 存储了数千万张佛罗里达州的嫌疑人照片和驾照照片，是美国运行时间最长的警用人脸识别数据库之一。
The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the suit, says Dillon was arrested at his home in front of his wife, held overnight in a cold cell, and transported in a caged, unlit van. He pledged the title to his truck to make bond. The arrest came during peak stone crab season, causing him to fall behind on rent and nearly lose his home. His mug shot stayed online for nearly a year, removed from the county website only after a TV reporter intervened. 提起诉讼的美国公民自由联盟（ACLU）表示，狄龙是在家中当着妻子的面被捕的，他在寒冷的牢房里被关押了一夜，并被关在没有灯光的囚车中运送。他不得不抵押了自己的卡车产权来支付保释金。这次逮捕正值石蟹捕捞旺季，导致他拖欠了房租，几乎失去了住所。他的嫌疑人照片在网上挂了近一年，直到一位电视记者介入后才从县政府网站上撤下。
Strangers approach Dillon in public to ask about the case, the complaint says, and he no longer feels comfortable talking to children. 诉状称，陌生人在公共场合接近狄龙询问案件情况，这让他现在与儿童交谈时感到非常不适。
The incident took place shortly before midnight on November 2, 2023, at a McDonald’s in Jacksonville Beach, where a man allegedly approached a girl under 12 and repeatedly asked her to leave with him. She refused. After he approached her a second time, she called for her mother. The man left before the police arrived. 事件发生在 2023 年 11 月 2 日午夜前不久，地点是杰克逊维尔海滩的一家麦当劳。据称，一名男子接近了一名 12 岁以下的女孩，并多次要求她跟他走。女孩拒绝了。在他第二次接近她后，女孩呼叫了母亲。该男子在警察到达前离开了现场。
The complaint lays out several facts that pointed away from Dillon and never reached the judge who signed the warrant for his arrest. A manager at the McDonald’s told investigators the suspect was a “regular customer” she had seen there multiple times. According to the complaint, Dillon had never visited Jacksonville Beach, living hundreds of miles away. 诉状列举了几个指向狄龙并非嫌疑人的事实，但这些信息从未传达到签署逮捕令的法官手中。麦当劳的一位经理告诉调查人员，嫌疑人是她多次见过的“常客”。根据诉状，狄龙从未去过杰克逊维尔海滩，他住在数百英里之外。
A Jacksonville Beach police officer assigned to the case sent an attempt-to-identify bulletin to surrounding agencies later that November using cell phone photos of the McDonald’s surveillance footage. A sergeant with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO) ran the images through FACES and sent back the “93 percent match” to Dillon’s name. The investigating officer then requested a search of license plate readers for two vehicles registered to Dillon, covering the days around the incident. Neither turned up anywhere in the county, according to the complaint, which says the results were omitted from the warrant application. 同年 11 月晚些时候，负责此案的一名杰克逊维尔海滩警官利用麦当劳监控录像的手机翻拍照片，向周边机构发送了身份识别公告。杰克逊维尔警长办公室（JSO）的一名警长通过 FACES 系统运行了这些图像，并将“93% 匹配”的结果指向了狄龙。随后，调查警官要求查询狄龙名下两辆车在案发前后的车牌识别记录。诉状称，这些车辆在县内任何地方都没有出现过，但这些结果在申请逮捕令时被隐瞒了。
Six months passed with no further investigation, the complaint says. In July 2024, the officer submitted the warrant. A judge signed it, and Dillon was arrested the following month. He retained a criminal defense attorney and, that October, pleaded not guilty. The State Attorney’s Office dropped all charges a few weeks later. The investigating officer was nevertheless promoted by the end of the year. 诉状称，六个月过去了，没有任何进一步的调查。2024 年 7 月，该警官提交了逮捕令。法官签署后，狄龙于次月被捕。他聘请了刑事辩护律师，并于同年 10 月提出无罪抗辩。几周后，州检察官办公室撤销了所有指控。尽管如此，这名调查警官在年底还是获得了晋升。
“I will never get over how terrified and worried I was, wondering if I’d ever go home to my wife and daughter again,” Dillon says in a statement shared by his attorneys. “Over a year later, I’m still picking up the pieces of my life, all because the police relied on this dangerous technology instead of doing their jobs and actually investigating.” “我永远无法忘记当时有多么恐惧和担忧，我不知道自己是否还能回到妻子和女儿身边，”狄龙在律师分享的一份声明中说。“一年多过去了，我仍在努力重建我的生活，这一切仅仅是因为警方依赖这种危险的技术，而不是履行职责进行真正的调查。”
The suit names the investigating officer and the JSO sergeant individually, and also targets the City of Jacksonville Beach, the Jacksonville Sheriff, and the Pinellas County Sheriff in their official capacities. It seeks compensatory and punitive damages, and asks a court to order all three agencies to overhaul their face-recognition policies. 该诉讼将调查警官和 JSO 警长列为个人被告，同时将杰克逊维尔海滩市、杰克逊维尔警长和皮内拉斯县警长列为官方被告。诉讼要求赔偿损失和惩罚性赔偿，并请求法院下令这三个机构彻底改革其人脸识别政策。
“Due to pending litigation, we would be unable to comment further on the incident,” a Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office spokesperson tells WIRED in a statement. The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 杰克逊维尔警长办公室的一位发言人在给《连线》（WIRED）的声明中表示：“由于诉讼正在进行中，我们无法对该事件发表进一步评论。”皮内拉斯县警长办公室没有立即回应置评请求。
Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters told local news station Action News Jax after the case was dropped that a face-recognition hit alone would not constitute probable cause in his office: “If you came to me with a facial-recognition hit and that was your probable cause, I would probably kick you out of my office,” he said. 杰克逊维尔警长 T.K. 沃特斯（T.K. Waters）在案件撤销后告诉当地新闻台 Action News Jax，仅凭人脸识别匹配结果在他的办公室并不构成“相当理由”（probable cause）：“如果你拿着人脸识别匹配结果来找我，并将其作为你的相当理由，我可能会把你赶出我的办公室，”他说。
FACES has been operated by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office since 2001, making it one of the oldest police face-recognition systems in the country. At its peak in 2021, its tens of millions of Florida mug shots and driver’s license photos were accessible to more than 260 agencies—including the FBI and ICE. To use the system, investigators upload an image of a suspect, the system compares it against the gallery, and it returns a ranked list of possible matches. FACES 自 2001 年起由皮内拉斯县警长办公室运营，是美国最古老的警用人脸识别系统之一。在 2021 年的巅峰时期，包括联邦调查局（FBI）和移民及海关执法局（ICE）在内的 260 多个机构都可以访问其数千万张佛罗里达州的嫌疑人照片和驾照照片。使用该系统时，调查人员上传嫌疑人的图像，系统将其与数据库进行比对，并返回一份按可能性排序的匹配列表。
The system has long operated with little oversight. A 2016 study by Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology found that Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office conducted no audits of how the database was searched and required no reasonable suspicion to run a query. Asked whether the office audited searches for misuse, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri replied, “No, not really.” Florida agencies have also used FACES to scan peaceful protesters, according to reporting by the Sun Sentinel and Pulitzer Center. 该系统长期以来在缺乏监管的情况下运行。乔治城大学法律中心隐私与技术中心 2016 年的一项研究发现，皮内拉斯县警长办公室从未对数据库的搜索方式进行过审计，且进行查询时无需任何合理怀疑。当被问及办公室是否会对滥用搜索行为进行审计时，警长鲍勃·瓜尔蒂耶里（Bob Gualtieri）回答说：“没有，并没有。”据《太阳哨兵报》和普利策中心报道，佛罗里达州的机构还曾使用 FACES 来扫描和平抗议者。
ACLU says Dillon’s case is one of at least 15 known wrongful arrests in the United States attributed to face-recognition technology. Earlier this year, the same Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office wrongfully arrested a North Carolina man in an auto-theft investigation. According to Action News Jax, he spent nearly three months in jail after an 85 percent match led to his arrest. By the time the charges were dropped, he had lost his home, his job, and custody of his [children]. ACLU 表示，狄龙的案件是美国已知至少 15 起归因于人脸识别技术的错误逮捕事件之一。今年早些时候，同一家杰克逊维尔警长办公室在一次汽车盗窃调查中错误地逮捕了一名北卡罗来纳州男子。据 Action News Jax 报道，在一次 85% 的匹配结果导致他被捕后，他在监狱里待了近三个月。当指控被撤销时，他已经失去了房子、工作以及[子女]的监护权。