By James Pero For Dailymail.com
Published: 20:58 BST, 16 May 2019 | Updated: 21:30 BST, 16 May 2019
View
comments
A new report details what privacy experts are calling a dangerous misapplication of facial recognition that uses photos of celebrities and digitally-doctored images to comb for criminals.
According to a detailed investigation by Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology, one New York Police Department detective attempted to identify a suspect by scanning the face of actor Woody Harrelson.
After footage from a security camera failed to produce results in a facial recognition scan, the detective used Google images of what he concluded to be the suspects celebrity doppelganger -- Woody Harrelson -- to run a test.
The system turned up a match, says the report, who was eventually arrested on charges of petit larceny.
Scroll down for video
In a new report from Georgetown University, an investigation shows that police have used celebrities to help its facial recognition software identify suspects.
Scanning celebrity likenesses isn't the only way the department is pushing the limits of facial recognition technology.
The report also details how in some cases, images of suspects are digitally altered to increase the likelihood of a successful match.
For instance, in cases where a suspect's mouth is open -- a pose that is more difficult for algorithms to assess -- images are doctored through superimposing a closed mouth over the mouth of the original suspect.
The reports says that those facial features are sourced from stock images of other faces.
The danger is that subtle variations in facial characteristics may affect the outcome of the software's matching process and increase the likelihood of falsely identifying someone, says the report.
There are currently no overlying set of guidelines for how and when officers can use facial recognition software in investigations, says the report. As a result similar applications have cropped up across the country.
A recent report from the Washington Post detailed how some officers in the Washington County police department are using artistic renderings -- sketches -- of suspects to try and find matches in its database of mugshots.
Specifically, the department uses a software called Rekognition which is developed and sold by the
