A 61-year-old man has sued Macy's department store and Sunglass Hut for using a facial recognition system against him to wrongfully accuse him of robbing their stores at gunpoint. Harvey Eugene Murphy Jr., as the complainant is called, was arrested in October 2023 for the robbery in one of these stores in the Houston area (USA). While he was detained, and until the alibi proving his innocence was proven, Murphy was raped and beaten, according to his complaint. If confirmed, it would be a new case in which facial recognition systems applied to citizen security cause errors with serious consequences.
The fateful story begins in January 2022, when two armed robbers stole thousands of dollars and products from one of these eyeglass stores in the Houston area. Nearly two years later, police stopped Murphy while he was in Texas at an office to renew his driver's license. According to the complaint that he has made Guardianthe arrested person claims that it was an employee of the parent company of Sunglass Hut (EssilorLuxottica), in collaboration with Macy's, who gave his name to the authorities.
While the Houston Police Department was investigating the armed robbery, this employee used facial recognition software to identify Murphy as one of the robbers. Even though the image that was entered into the system came from low-quality cameras, according to the lawsuit, the EssilorLuxottica representative called the police to notify them that he had already identified one of the culprits with this technology. In addition, he accused Murphy, who was living in California at the time, as responsible for two other robberies.
Murphy is now claiming 10 million dollars (just over 9 million euros) from Macy's and EssilorLuxottica for the improper use of this facial recognition system that wrongly identified him. During his 10-day detention in the Harris County (Texas) jail, he suffered beatings and a gang rape, which left him with serious physical and psychological consequences.
“The attack left him with permanent injuries that he has to live with every day of his life,” the lawsuit says. “All of this happened to Murphy because the defendants relied on facial recognition technology, which is known to be error-prone and defective.”
Murphy's case once again highlights the shortcomings and dangers of using facial recognition, especially in an area as sensitive as the prosecution of suspected criminals, as it is known to produce false positives, especially against black people. His lawyer, Daniel Dutko, has explained to local media that this technology is the only plausible explanation for his false identification and arrest.
“We know that studies show that African Americans have a high rate of false positives based on facial recognition software. It is also known that comparing older people with photos of themselves when they were young has a very high rate of up to 90% of false positives,” argues Dutko. Murphy had a criminal record from the 1980s and 1990s, which is why he appeared in the system that identified him by mistake. This would be the first known case of a white man being wrongly accused using this technology. “Mr. Murphy's story is worrying for all citizens of this country,” Dutko said in a statement. “Anyone could be wrongly accused of a crime based on error-prone facial recognition software, just as he was.”
In recent years, several cases have warned of the danger of trusting these algorithms to arrest citizens, as happened with Robert Julian-Borchak Williams, arrested by the Detroit police, or that of Porcha Woodruff, who was pregnant and the real thief was not . For this reason, the use of facial recognition to combat crime has been one of the most controversial points in the debate over the pioneering artificial intelligence law in the European Union.
You can follow EL PAÍS Technology in Facebook and x or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
#man #claims #million #Macy39s #stores #facial #recognition #accuse #robbery #commit