Man sued Florida police for arrest for “93% match” in facial recognition

In the photo, Dillon’s face was “surrounded by five fillers—chosen to resemble Mr. Dillon, not the suspect,” so “Dillon became, almost by definition, the person in the crowd who most resembled the suspect,” McDonald’s supervisor recalled, the lawsuit said. O’Connell did not show the photo to the victim, the lawsuit said.

The 93 percent figure is a confidence level, which is “a measure of the digital proximity between two mathematical images” and “not a measure of the probability that the two images depict the same person,” the lawsuit said. Facial recognition algorithms differ in how they are designed and trained, making it difficult to determine what the score means, the lawsuit said.

“An official given a ‘93% match’ from an AI-powered system has no way to check the basis of those scores, no way to check if the system’s confidence is justified, and no knowledge to understand what ‘93%’ actually means in probabilistic terms,” ​​the lawsuit said.

Arrests affect life and work

Dillon was self-employed as a commercial lobsterman and was arrested during the most profitable time of the year for his work, the lawsuit said. He did not work for a month because he “couldn’t focus on anything other than the pending charges and continued exposure to the public at his own risk” and “didn’t want to be in public for fear of meeting people who suspected him of being a child abductor,” the lawsuit said.

Dillon fell behind on his monthly rent and returned to work after facing the possibility of losing his home, the lawsuit said. “People in the community still go to him in public to ask him about the crime,” it said. “He is no longer comfortable interacting with children. No law enforcement agency has apologized or admitted that he was wrong.”

An ACLU press release quoted Dillon as saying that he “will not continue with the fear and anxiety I had, wondering if I will ever go home to my wife and daughter again. Dillon said the police “relied on this dangerous technology instead of doing their job and investigating.”

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office declined to comment when contacted by Ars today. We have contacted Jacksonville Beach Police and the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and will update this story when we receive a response.