Incident 829: Facial Recognition System in Buenos Aires Triggers Police Checks Based on False Matches

Description: Buenos Aires's facial recognition system mistakenly flagged innocent people as criminals, leading to wrongful stops and detentions. Judicial investigations indicate the technology may have been misused for unauthorized surveillance and data collection. Despite privacy risks, the system has been used widely without full disclosure of standards or safeguards,

Editor Notes: Reconstruction of the timeline of events: (1) 2019: Buenos Aires implements a facial recognition system aimed at enhancing public safety, capturing thousands of individuals. (2) After implementation in 2019: At least 140 individuals, including Guillermo Ibarrola, are erroneously flagged as criminals due to database errors, leading to police checks and detentions. (3) 2020: The facial recognition feature is deactivated as a precaution during the COVID-19 pandemic and remains off by judicial order. (4) December 2023: Journalists confirm that their biometric data was accessed, which in turn prompted further scrutiny by them. (5) February 5, 2024: The Pulitzer Center publishes a report on the issues surrounding Buenos Aires's facial recognition system.

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Alleged: Government of Argentina developed an AI system deployed by Government of Argentina , Government of Buenos Aires and Argentinean Ministry of Security, which harmed Argentinean citizens , Buenos Aires residents and Guillermo Ibarrola.

Incident Stats

Incident ID

829

Report Count

Incident Date

2024-02-05

Editors

Daniel Atherton

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

How We Investigated Mass Surveillance in Argentina

pulitzercenter.org

pulitzercenter.org · 2024

Seventy-five percent of the Argentine capital area is under video surveillance, which the government proudly advertises on billboards. But the facial recognition system, part of the city's sprawling surveillance infrastructure, is being cri…

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.