Robert Williams Spent 30 Hours Detained After Facial Recognition Mistook Him for Watch Thief

In early January, Robert Williams, an African American, spent 30 hours in detention after a software judged the photo of his driver's license identical to the image of a watch thief captured by surveillance cameras.

“With the Knicks and James Dolan's hypersensitivity, we risk ending up in an episode of Black Mirror”

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Williams filed a complaint on Wednesday, June 23, in Detroit, saying he was arrested and handcuffed in front of his home in the presence of his wife and his two daughters aged 2 and 5.

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He wrote in an op-ed published by the Washington Post, asking, "How do you explain to two little girls that a computer was wrong but the police still listened?"

The complaint described officers showing him two blurry photos of a Black man and quoting an officer saying, "The computer must have erred," after police looked at each other.

The Ouest-France account ties the case to broader concerns about facial recognition technology lacking reliability in identifying minorities, noting that no specific case of error had been documented until now.

In London suburbs, security guard Simon Mackenzie described using Facewatch, a facial recognition site used by QD Stores, after he chased three thiefs who sprinted off with several boxes of laundry detergent.

Mackenzie said he watched security camera footage on an old computer, enlarged screenshots of each thief’s face, and uploaded their photos to Facewatch so that "the staff would receive an alert" the next time the listed faces entered a store.

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He explained that Facewatch maintains a watchlist for 250 pounds per month and that when Facewatch flags a listed face, "a text alert warns the store" that employees can monitor the person or eject them.

The La Presse account says Facewatch is used nationwide by retailers exposed to petty crime, and that Mackenzie adds one or two new faces per week, mostly diaper thieves, food thieves, pet-product thieves, and other cheap items.

It also describes Facewatch’s scale, saying the product is used in nearly 400 stores across the United Kingdom and that records are deleted after a year.

Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall are at the center of a controversy over facial recognition technology used to deny entry to lawyers involved in litigation against MSG Entertainment, with New York Attorney General Letitia James sending a letter to executives expressing interest in the practice.

“Home to the famous New York Knicks basketball team and numerous Billy Joel concerts, the famous Madison Square Garden (MSG) in Manhattan is at the center of the controversy as it is accused of discriminatory use of facial recognition technology”

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The Economist & Jurist account says the letter was sent a month after The New York Times reported that security guards at Radio City Music Hall told Kelly Conlon she was on a "lawyer exclusion list" when she tried to access the theater for a show in November.

James warned that the practice "may have affected up to 90 law firms," and the same account quotes her urging MSG Entertainment to reverse the policy, saying, "Anyone with a ticket to an event should not have to worry that entry could be unjustly denied based on their appearance."

In response, MSG Entertainment’s spokesperson said, "our policy does not illegally prohibit anyone from accessing our venues," and the company argued it was excluding "a small percentage of lawyers" only during active litigation.

Democracy Now! adds that Wired’s investigation describes Dolan’s system as a surveillance network that "captures everyone, and some people get labeled as threats, even when they’re clearly not," and it says Dolan’s blacklist extends to Radio City Music Hall and Sphere in Las Vegas.