Cops Used DNA to Predict a Suspect's Face – and Tried Facial Recognition on It

https://www.wired.com/story/parabon-nanolabs-dna-face-models-police-facial-recognition/

by gigama • 3 years ago

18 12 3 years ago

gigama• 3 years ago

"The detective’s request to run a DNA-generated estimation of a suspect’s face through facial recognition tech has not previously been reported. Found in a trove of hacked police records published by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets, it appears to be the first known instance of a police department attempting to use facial recognition on a face algorithmically generated from crime-scene DNA."

"It’s really just junk science to consider something like this," Jennifer Lynch, general counsel at civil liberties nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells WIRED. Running facial recognition with unreliable inputs, like an algorithmically generated face, is more likely to misidentify a suspect than provide law enforcement with a useful lead, she argues. "There’s no real evidence that Parabon can accurately produce a face in the first place," Lynch says. "It’s very dangerous, because it puts people at risk of being a suspect for a crime they didn’t commit."

mrguyorama• 3 years ago

Police LOVE using BS "science" in their work. So many "forensic methods" are just bogus, completely made up by one guy who tours the country selling his "method" to police departments. Most of them are even regularly used in court, despite being utter trash. As long as you can get an "Expert" to take some money to say it in court, a judge will allow it, and allow juries to believe it is as true as cops say.

Atheros• 3 years ago

And so trivial to falsify. In this case, put your own DNA in and see that the picture output doesn't look like you.

For fiber analysis, give the expert some fibers of known origin and see if they get it right. Give them some hair from one of 200 people; see if they can tell who it's from. None of that got done for decades. Police and judges clearly do not care.

rossant• 3 years ago

That is true for a number of forensic methods, indeed [1]. For the sole issue of the controversial diagnosis of abusive head trauma (one forensic method among many other, which specifically involves sudden infant deaths or collapses), there may be thousands of wrongful convictions. Courts deserve better.

[1] https://cifsjustice.org/about-cifs/reform-in-forensic-scienc...

[2] https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2023/05/a-journey-into-the-sha...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402

FireBeyond2• 2 years ago

completely made up by one guy who tours the country selling his "method" to police departments

... oftentimes that one guy is an ex-cop. No bias there.

TacticalCoder• 3 years ago

We may not be there yet but hardly a week goes by without a cold case being solved in Europe (don't know about the US).

There are judges, for example in France, who are now forcing cases to be re-opened due to greatly advanced and also greatly lowered costs for DNA testing.

So cases where DNA was collected decades ago is now usable.

A case has been solved a few days ago (forgot which one it was) but the one that impressed me the most was a cold case where the killer was a serial killer and... a cop. Once, 20 years after the last crime or so, a letter was sent to all the cops that could have been in Paris (they suspected a cop was the killer) at that time was sent to ask them for a DNA sample, that cop, now retired cop due to his age, committed suicide.

He knew it was "gg".

Bad times for bad guys who committed crimes a long time ago: at any point now the cold case may be solved.

These cold cases being solved also make it to the news, frontpage: constantly reminding those who got away with their crime that they cannot sleep tight.

It may be sci-fi, today, to use DNA to predict a face and then to run facial recognition on it but...

It's not sci-fi to use new science discoveries to solve cold cases. And I'm very happy that motherfuckers are getting caught.

hnu234• 3 years ago

don't know about the US

It's old news here. From April 2018...

"Relative's DNA from genealogy websites cracked East Area Rapist case"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16936041

Modified3019• 3 years ago

In the US, it’s going to vary wildly, with some places solving old cases, and some places with such a huge backlog that they just stick the DNA sample in a freezer and ignore it.

PH95VuimJjqBqy2• 3 years ago

honestly, as long as DNA is used to confirm the suspect, I'm ok with it.

I understand DNA isn't 100% perfect, but we convict based upon it so it doesn't seem unreasonable to try and generate a face and then run it through a facial recognizer to gather a list of suspects.

Now how they approach those suspects is a different matter. If you ask me, THAT is where the problems arise, not from the use of the tech itself. Although, having said that, I think it's clear this technique isn't all that useful.

FireBeyond2• 2 years ago

honestly, as long as DNA is used to confirm the suspect, I'm ok with it.

I'm not. This sequence of events should in no way meet the probable cause standard. "DNA face prediction" is not even remotely an exact science (and is realistically more artistic than scientific), so you have this barely-to-not-credible face image, and then you run it through the next snake oil of "facial recognition" which has so many issues, bugs, concerns, and failings, especially with minorities and so on, and you're okay with demanding whatever comes out of that is something that can be used to compel a DNA sample out of someone?!?

I don't know how much more vehemently I could oppose this.

PH95VuimJjqBqy2• 2 years ago

as I said in my post, how they approach the people they get hits on is where the problems actually are.

this isn't like "bitemark analysis" where the results themselves are used to convict people, once someone is found using this method DNA testing will confirm or deny that it's the right person.

Because of this, there will be solid evidence that this approach works or doesn't work. It will continue to be used or not continue to be used because the resulting DNA test provides conclusive evidence that it works or doesn't. As opposed to bite mark analysis, which relies on expert testimony with all the perverse incentives that exist there.

We agree on the potential problems around getting DNA samples to confirm, but the technical use is harmless otherwise.

DyslexicAtheist• 3 years ago

TL;DR:

police combines unproven technology in criminal investigations without oversight.

"what precedent they'd argue allows this. Is this same as grabbing small part of fingerprint, using AI to complete fingerprint, then looking for match against fingerprint database? Or is this reaching beyond that? What are odds of a false positive in this case?" -- https://nitter.cz/KimZetter/status/1749504703371862452

Cops Used DNA to Predict a Suspect's Face – and Tried Facial Recognition on It

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