The Economist - USA (2019-07-13)

28 United States The EconomistJuly 13th 2019

Y

ouare 23 yearsold,freshoutofthe

academyandeagertoprotectand

serve,outonwhatwassupposedtobea

quietweekday-afternoonpatrol.You

passa redpickuptruck,whichyour

partnerrecognises:it belongstoa guy

witha coupleofoutstandingarrestwar-

rants.Youpullhimover.Yourpartner

getsoutofthecarandtellstheguyhehas

tobringhimin.Theguypromisesto

comeinlaterthisafternoonafterhe

dropsoffhisdaughter,whoisinthe

truck,athermother’shouse.Your

partnerrefuses—he’sheardit before.The

guygetsagitated.Suddenlythedoorof

thetruckopens,anda girl,maybe 10 or 11

yearsold,startsshoutingatyourpartner

fortakingherdaddy.Shestepsoutofthe

truck,pointingherfather’shuntingrifle

atyourpartner.Whatdoyoudo?

Thatisjustoneoftheroughly 500

scenariosonthefats(FirearmsTraining

Simulator),aninteractivemachine

designed,saysRaulHernandez,a detec-

tivewhoputsnearly1,000Newarkoffi-

cersthroughtheirpacesonthefats

twicea year,“totrainourofficersto

surviveanencounterwitha personwith

a weapon.”Around3,800agenciesin

America,andhundredsmorearoundthe

world,includingtheCanadianandSin-

gaporeanarmiesandtheBritishMinistry

ofDefence,usethesemachines.

Thetrainingislikea high-endvideo

game.Holdinga gunloadedwithcom-

pressedairratherthanbullets,trainees

facea bankofscreensasthescenarios

unfold:a mentallyillmanshoutsthreats

whileholdinga weaponoutsideanapart-

mentbuilding,a teenagedgirlmenacesa

boywitha knife,thereisa liveshooterin

a hospital.Trainerscanchangethesce-

narioastraineesrespond.Theweapon

heldbythementallyillmanmightturn

outtobea hairbrush.Sometimesthe

rightresponseisa verbalone:theteen-

agedgirlcanputdowntheknifeif or-

deredrepeatedlyandfirmlytodropit.

Themachineteachespolicewhento

pullthetriggerandwhentoholdoff.But

it alsoshowscitizensjusthowquickly

policehavetomakelife-and-deathdeci-

sions.MrHernandezsaysthatsome

activistsandcriticsofthepolicehave

beenputthroughtheirpacesonthe

machines,and“comeoutsaying,‘I didn’t

realisewhata hardjobyouhave’.”An

officerfroma differentdepartment

notedwrylythatcitizensletlooseonthe

simulator“shooteverybody”.Notquite:

yourcorrespondent,thefatherofan

11-year-old,gothispartnerkilledbecause

hecouldnotshootthegirlwiththerifle.

Knowwhentohold’em

Policetraining

NEWARK,NEWJERSEY

Simulatorsteachpoliceandtheircriticswhentoshoot—andwhennotto

Whatwouldyoudo?

W

hen thinking about police use of fa-

cial recognition, most Americans

probably fall somewhere between two ex-

tremes. On one side is the approach taken

by San Francisco and Somerville, Massa-

chusetts, both of which earlier this year

banned municipal agencies, including the

police, from using facial recognition.

On the other is the view expressed by

Michael McCaul, a Republican congress-

man from Texas, who during a hearing of

the House Homeland Security Committee

on July 10th announced: “When somebody

is in the public domain...there’s no expec-

tation of privacy.” Imagine a world in which

cameras equipped with facial recognition

were ubiquitous. In Mr McCaul’s view, a

permanent government record of every-

where everyone goes would be the price

people pay for leaving their homes.

The Supreme Court has rejected ver-

sions of that view in United States v Jones, a

case in 2012 which held that police violated

a suspect’s Fourth Amendment rights by at-

taching a gpsdevice to his car without a

warrant. Carpenter v United Statesheld that

obtaining a suspect’s mobile-phone meta-

data without a warrant also violated his pri-

vacy rights. John Roberts, the chief justice,

noted that the Court had long “recognised

that individuals have a reasonable expecta-

tion of privacy in the whole of their physi-

cal movements”. A person may have atten-

uated expectations of privacy in public, but

tracking everywhere they go violates them.

Bennie Thompson, who chairs the

House Homeland Security Committee,

charted a reasonable path between those

views in last week’s hearing. “Before the

government deploys [facial recognition]

further,” he said, “[it] must be scrutinised

and the American public needs to be given

a chance to weigh in.” His committee’s

hearing, on how the Department of Home-

land Security uses facial recognition and

other biometrics, had been scheduled for

some time, but news that broke on July 7th

gave it extra salience.

The Washington Postreported that over

the past several years, federal agents have

conducted almost 400,000 facial-recogni-

tion searches using state and local data-

bases, including collections of drivers’-li-

cence photos, without warrants or

licence-holders’ consent. Among the

searchers were agents from Immigration

and Customs Enforcement (ice), who ap-

pear to have trawled drivers’-licence pho-

tos in Utah, Vermont and Washington—all

states that provide licences to undocu-

mented immigrants. These states invited

undocumented immigrants to come for-

ward. The federal government then used

that trust against them.

In May the House Oversight Committee

examined the civil-liberties implications

of the technology. The committee chair-

man, Elijah Cummings, plans to hold an-

other hearing before calling for legislation.

Privacy may yet prove to be the rare issue

on which an otherwise largely divided

American public can agree. 7

WASHINGTON, DC

Congress is starting to ask questions

about facial recognition

Surveillance technology

Vision quest