Innocent Man’s Nightmare: Arrest, Rape, and Beating Due to Facial Recognition Error, $10M Lawsuit Alleges!
CNS News–Harvey Murphy was arrested and jailed at a local DMV in January 2022 while renewing his driver’s license. Murphy filed a $10 million complaint alleging that a Sunglass Hut “loss prevention” worker used facial recognition software to accuse him of an armed robbery in Houston, Texas. Murphy was about 2,000 miles away during the heist.
Murphy, 61, sued Macy’s and Sunglass Hut, claiming he was detained and placed in an overcrowded maximum-security jail among vicious felons. In jail trying to prove his innocence, he was beaten, gang-raped, and left with terrible lifelong disabilities. His accusations were dropped and he was released hours after being beaten and gang-raped.”
“All of this because a company told the police, based on artificial intelligence, that you committed terrible crimes,” the lawsuit alleged. Houston, Texas, saw the armed robbery on January 22, 2022. Two armed guys invaded Sunglass Hut, intimidated two staff with firearms, and stole cash and sunglasses.
Sunglass Hut is owned by EssilorLuxottica, which employs “loss prevention” personnel to help with criminal investigations like many large retailers. The lawsuit claims that EssilorLuxottica loss prevention agent Anthony Pfleger called the police after the robbery and claimed to know who did it.
A 61-year-old man alleges that a facial recognition algorithm used a mugshot from the 1980s to ID him in a crime he didn’t commit.
According to his lawsuit, “hours after being beaten and gang-raped, the charges against him were dropped.” https://t.co/ZjahB72Y4s
— VICE News (@VICENews) January 24, 2024
“Pfleger told HPD they could stop their investigation because he found their guy,” the lawsuit says. He said he collaborated with Macy’s loss prevention to identify Harvey Eugene Murphy Jr. as the Sunglass Hut’s violent robber. EssilorLuxottica and Macy’s used AI and face recognition to identify Murphy as the robber from the footage.
Pfleger and loss prevention agents identified the robbers at a Houston Macy’s. In America, retail store cameras are so common that we hardly see them. These cameras monitor shoppers and can help police solve crimes. They often produce low-quality photos and films that make people hard to recognize.
Over the previous decade, retail businesses connected these cameras to facial recognition software. A computer might automatically recognize known thieves entering a retail store and alert police or loss prevention personnel to track them. However, facial recognition is often unreliable. Systems often misidentify humans due to all-too-human prejudices.
Many Black people have been falsely arrested due to poor facial recognition technology. Despite this, EssilorLuxottica pushed Houston police to arrest Murphy. After calling the police, Pfleger prepared a Sunglass Hut employee to identify Murphy in a photo lineup, according to the lawsuit.
Sunglass Hut targeted Murphy easily. He was a criminal. The complaint claims he has turned his life around as a grandfather. The lawsuit claimed that EssilorLuxottica’s facial recognition databases included 1980s mugshots. Murphy was robbed in Sacramento. He wasn’t informed of the robbery or his guilt until he renewed his driver’s license at the DMV.
He was jailed without bond. Despite providing his court-appointed counsel exoneration material, he spent hours in jail. “A few hours before Murphy was released from jail, he was followed into the bathroom by three violent criminals,” the lawsuit alleged. He was pummeled, pinned, and gang-raped.
After the rape, one of the criminals placed a shank to his neck and threatened to kill him if he reported it. Murphy crept to his bunk and prayed these men wouldn’t assault again. His release was delayed, but the harm was done. All of this happened to Murphy because the Defendants relied on error-prone and inaccurate facial recognition technology, the lawsuit alleged.
Os Keyes, a University of Washington PhD candidate and Ada Lovelace Fellow, called the case “tragic and entirely unsurprising.” “This is precisely the kind of situation we’ve been warning about for years; that these systems, whatever their theoretical reliability, are in practice so finicky, and so consequential, that they cannot be fixed,” Keyes told Motherboard.
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“The only thing I’d dispute is Murphy’s lawyer’s claim that it could happen to anyone; these systems are appealing because they promise to automate and speed up ‘business as usual,’ which includes laundering police biases against system members, minorities, and others who don’t fit.
This consequence is inevitable and frightening, and it should be used to constrain and restructure policing and FRT. Macy’s told Motherboard it didn’t comment on pending litigation via email. EssilorLuxottica remained silent.