Incident 76: Live facial recognition is tracking kids suspected of being criminals

Description: Buenos Aires city government uses a facial recognition system that has led to numerous false arrests.

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Entities

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Alleged: unknown developed an AI system deployed by Buenos Aires city government, which harmed Buenos Aires children.

Incident Stats

Incident ID

Report Count

Incident Date

2020-10-09

Editors

Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam

CSETv0 Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Full Description

In Argentina in 2019, Consulta Nacional de Rebeldías y Capturas (CONARC), a national database of alleged criminal offenders, began to power a live facial recognition system in Buenos Aires deployed by the city government. The system has led to numerous false arrests, which the police have no established protocol for handling, and the database also includes minors, which facial recognition systems are not designed to accurately recognize.

Short Description

Buenos Aires city government uses a facial recognition system that has led to numerous false arrests.

Severity

Minor

Harm Distribution Basis

Age

Harm Type

Harm to civil liberties

AI System Description

CONARC uses photo IDs alongside resident informaion such as names, birthday, and national ID to track alleged offenders using live camera feed

Sector of Deployment

Public administration and defence

Relevant AI functions

Perception, Cognition

AI Techniques

facial recognition, machine learning, environmental sensing

AI Applications

Facial recognition, environmental sensing, biometrics, image recognition

Location

Buenos Aires, Argentina, CONARC, Consulta Nacional de Rebeldías y Capturas

Named Entities

Buenos Aires, Argentina, CONARC

Beginning Date

4/2019

Ending Date

10/2020

Near Miss

Harm caused

Intent

Accident

Lives Lost

Data Inputs

photo IDs, names birthdays, and national IDs of people suspected of crimes, camera feed

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Live facial recognition is tracking kids suspected of being criminals

technologyreview.com

technologyreview.com · 2020

In a national database in Argentina, tens of thousands of entries detail the names, birthdays, and national IDs of people suspected of crimes. The database, known as the Consulta Nacional de Rebeldías y Capturas (National Register of Fugiti…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.