Police in a county located in the US state of Minnesota have defended their use of face recognition software to identify perpetrators in serious crimes.Hennepin County Sheriff's Office wrote in a Facebook post that the solution is used to verify an identity against a database.”We attempt to match unknown criminal suspects to a database of public Hennepin County booking photos. In the Sheriff's Office, we do not gather or retain photos real-time from cameras in the community. We do not monitor the actions of residents at street corners or intersections to identify potential violations.”We do not currently, nor do we have any plan or intent to 'use real-time automatic facial recognition to create a database of everywhere you go'.”The post followed a blog post by a commenter, Tony Webster, entitled “Hennepin County Sheriff circumvents state to expand facial recognition database”.Webster, a software engineer who lives in Minneapolis, had been purusing efforts to compel the Sheriff's Office to release its e-mail communication about the technology. In his post, he details an analysis of the correspondence he has uncovered. In its Facebook post response, the sheriff's office details how the software was used to identify Anthony M. Rechichi, who is a suspect in the May 20 robbery of Hiway Credit Union in Minneapolis and a person of interest in another bank robbery.”Prior to implementation, we carefully reviewed the potential uses of the software, and adopted a policy and training program that severely restricts its use in our Agency. However, in the event of a violent crime, such as these bank robberies, we will use this software to generate available leads. The community expects us to solve these crimes, and to use the tools available, while also protecting privacy. Our policy, which prohibits the use of this software except with internal approval and supervision, protects against its misuse: only images related to a criminal investigation can be processed.”Ours is a law enforcement Agency; we make no apology for our mission to solve crime, or to prioritize violent crime. And as we conduct our mandated responsibilities, we respect our laws, including data practice laws, and we respect and protect the privacy rights of all residents”.
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