Detroiters concerned over facial recognition technology as police commissioners table vote

The Detroit Board of Police Commissioners tabled a controversial vote Thursday around the use of facial recognition technology in city neighborhoods.

“It’s still under review, so we cannot move forward at this particular time," Commissioner Willie Bell said, explaining that discussions around that particular surveillance directive were still being hammered out with Police Chief James Craig and Mayor Mike Duggan. 

While the facial recognition vote was put off, the board did move forward and approved (6-3, with one abstention) a related directive dealing with rules around cameras mounted onto traffic lights throughout the city's neighborhoods. 

"Yes, the traffic light was dealing with face recognition, but we separated it out, they were combined together but they're two separate entities," said Bell. 

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Community members, who spoke during the public comment period, expressed a different point of view, indicating that they saw the two issues as inextricably tied. 

“I understand that you said facial recognition is not on the agenda today, but you moved forward and voted on traffic cameras that will have the capabilities of that technology," said Detroiter Tawana Petty.

“This facial recognition technology has been utilized for a couple of years without transparency and then the minute we get an opportunity to vocalize our concerns on it, it’s rushed through with little accountability," she continued. The city purchased facial recognition software in July 2017 for just over $1 million.

Willie Burton, one of the three commissioners who voted against the traffic directive, agreed with Petty stating that it was impossible to isolate the two directives. 

"It was all presented together and now all of a sudden they want to separate it because they knew the community was coming out to speak against it," said Burton. 

In a rundown of what occurred around the facial recognition directive and why it got pushed back, Gregory Hicks, the board's secretary, explained that the commissioners responded to the original facial recognition directive with 17 recommendations and Assistant Police Chief James White responded with the approval of all but two. The changes were then incorporated in the directive but "at last minute the department requested to pull back" the facial recognition vote. 

Hicks said he does not know why the department pulled the directive and that as of now there is no new date for a vote. 

Both directives involve the "Neighborhood Real-Time Intelligence Program," a new $9 million initiative that Duggan announced in March at his State of the City address. Using local and federal traffic modernization funds, the city will put high-definition cameras at various intersections in the neighborhoods. They will be monitored by Detroit Public Works staff at the Real Time Crime Center within the Detroit Police Department's Public Safety headquarters downtown. 

By the end of 2019, cameras are set to be installed at 11 intersections on the Greenfield and East Seven Mile corridors. Additionally, the Department of Public Works will add cameras to 29 intersections across the city. In 2020, an additional 400 cameras will be added.

“These are the traffic cameras we’re putting up. We will get shots of the perpetrators as they go past and we’ll be able to chase them down,” Duggan said at his State of the City. 

Under the traffic-light directive that passed Thursday, Detroit police are prohibited from using the footage or images from the traffic light cameras to enforce traffic misdemeanors or pedestrian laws or to issue civil infractions of any kind. The cameras cannot be used to assess immigration status or engage in immigration enforcement. And DPD cannot use audio from the cameras unless there is a verified court order. 

Footage and images obtained from the traffic light-mounted cameras can be used for "legitimate law enforcement purposes," defined as investigations into criminal activity, the pursuit of a criminal suspect, the monitoring of an ongoing situation "in which criminal activity is, or is reasonably expected to occur." 

DPD is not prohibited from focusing cameras on handbills, flyers or other materials carried pursuant to the First Amendment, but they will "avoid" doing this. 

While some checks are in place, critics remain concerned, especially when considering the yet to be voted on directive that deals with facial recognition.

Worries hit on privacy and the silencing of free speech to the actual efficacy of the technology. 

Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union of California tested images of members of Congress on "Rekognition" — Amazon's facial recognition tool. The organization found that of the 535 faces inputted, the software falsely matched 28 with people who had been arrested on criminal charges. Additionally, the software gave false matches for 39% of the minority members, who comprise only 20% of Congress. 

Such issues were raised in a May inter-office memo sent to the commissioners. The document cited a January report that found that facial recognition technology showed a lower accuracy rate for African Americans and another that found that artificial intelligence assigned more criminal intent to black men based on difficulties interpreting emotions of black faces. 

"That is enough to justify voting against it," said Eric Williams, an attorney working with the ACLU on a committee opposing the city's surveillance tactics. "If it said this for white men and women, this wouldn't even be considered." 

Last month, San Francisco — seen by many as the center of the tech-universe — became the first major city to ban police use of the technology, citing several of the concerns Williams and other critics of the software have raised.

"We have an outsize responsibility to regulate the excesses of technology precisely because they are headquartered here," Aaron Peskin, the city supervisor who sponsored the bill, told the New York Times at the time. 

This point was raised by Petty during her public comment Thursday. 

"The very technologists who created it said it’s harmful and biased. It doesn’t recognize darker skins," she said referencing an AI experiment that failed to recognize Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey.  

"I have to push you all to at least understand the technology you’re implementing," she continued. "This will be the largest experiment on black people in the United States — 700,000 black people being submitted to an experiment that has already failed all over the world." 

While the directives in question have been discussed in relation to the Neighborhood Real-Time Intelligence Program — the use of such technology and surveillance is not new in Detroit. This is just the latest surveillance project in an ever-expanding network.

The public-facing push to ramp up surveillance began in January 2016 when DPD launched Project Green Light. Starting with eight gas stations, the program has participating businesses pay for and install surveillance cameras on their property that feed directly to DPD's Real Time Crime Center. Additionally, as part of the program, businesses commit to ensuring they have robust lighting and a green light outside of their vicinity to let customers know they are a part of the program.

Today, more than 500 businesses — including churches, schools, and pharmacies — are a part of the program. There are also two "Green Light Corridors" and one public housing property signed on to be part of the program.

Prior to the launch of Project Green Light, however, city officials were thinking about surveillance and specifically facial recognition software. 

In fall 2015, Detroit's Office of Contracting and Procurement was working on a request for proposal for "Facial Recognition Software solutions" to be utilized by DPD's Real Time Crime Center (live video feeds) and investigation personnel (static images). 

In July 2017, the city entered into a three-year, $1,045,843, contract with South Carolina-based facial recognition software company DataWorks Plus, which pitched FACE Watch Plus in its bid for the contract. 

"FACE Watch Plus tracks face images from live video surveillance, processes the images, then searches your database and alerts you when a match/hit has been made," the proposal explained. "It detects faces within surveillance footage in real-time, then uses cutting-edge facial searching algorithms to rapidly search through your agency's mugshot or watchlist database for positive matches." 

The 2017 contract, which expired on Wednesday, explained that the purchase of facial recognition licensing, software and equipment was for "Project Green Light Locations."

Despite this stated use, a May report from Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology noted that nowhere on the Green Light website was the use of face recognition, real-time face surveillance, or any kind of automated face analysis technology mentioned.

This, according to Clare Garvie, a senior associate at the center and co-author of the report, is a problem. 

"It should be up to communities to decide whether the benefits of face recognition outweigh the risks and whether these benefits to public safety mean that this technology can and should be used on them," said Garvie. 

"What we found in Detroit is the decision to purchase not just face recognition — the ability to do investigations using face recognition — but the ability to do face surveillance was not something that was ever presented to the public," she continued. "It never appears to be presented to the Project Green Light partners, and yes that is absolutely a discussion that should have taken place before the city spends over a million dollars on a system."

For some of the Detroiters in attendance at the vote Thursday, the delay seemed to exacerbate questions of accountability. 

"If you can’t even conduct a vote with integrity," asked Janice Gates, "how do you expect us to believe that you will use facial recognition with integrity?" 

Detroiter Eric Blount echoed her sentiments.

"It feels like this meeting agenda switch is a sleight of hand switch, so many people came out here thinking they were going to understand and better express themselves on facial recognition and a last-minute switch," Blount said. "I just ask you to stick to the agenda, if there is any possibility that it will be changed, do it far in advance, because these meetings are very inconvenient for most people who have to work." 

Contact Allie Gross: AEGross@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @Allie_Elisabeth.