Houston Council Approves $178K Facial Recognition Network for Police

Houston City Council has approved a $178,000 contract with Airship AI Holdings, Inc. to install a 64-camera network for the Houston Police Department (HPD) that will incorporate facial recognition technology.

The one-year agreement will also provide additional server space for the new system. The specific locations for camera installation are yet to be determined. While HPD supports the initiative to combat crime, the proposal has sparked concerns regarding privacy and potential misidentification from some local residents.

Texas Southern University professor Carroll Robinson highlighted the risks of misidentification.

“Some innocent person, misidentified, not by a real-life person but by a camera, ends up in the criminal justice system, incarcerated at the county jail,” said Robinson, who is also a former Houston City Council member.

Robinson and his colleague, Dr. Michael O. Adams, have advocated for state legislation to prevent racial discrimination in AI applications.

A recent study by the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has shown significant improvements in mitigating racial bias in facial recognition technology, specifically examining NEC’s NeoFace solution and the HD5 Face Detector.

The research, which follows a 2019 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) study highlighting racial and gender biases in some facial recognition algorithms, found no statistically significant differences in accuracy across various demographic groups when the system is configured to the settings used by the Metropolitan Police.

Source: ABC 13

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June 14, 2024 – by Ali Nassar-Smith