this is bbc news. the latest news headlines follow at the top of the hour after this programme. across america, police are increasingly using facial recognition technology to fight crime. speaks spanish can you open the door? you want law enforcement to have more tools at our disposal, not less. images can be fed in to a database to search for matches and track people down but critics argue the use of this technology is opaque and could be inaccurate. if law enforcement knows

how accurate that is, how come they are fighting so hard to keep that information from us when we ask for it? why won't they share it? i'm james clayton, and i'm investigating whether the police should be using this controversial tech. the technology itself is harmful. it is too dangerous and that is just a massive threat to civil liberties in this nation. march, 2017. andrew conlyn is driving with a friend. i think we made about 1.5 miles into a 30—mile trip. andrew is in the front passenger seat, his friend is driving. and he's probably hitting 80, 90. i'm saying, you know,

"slow down". it was falling on deaf ears — i don't think he responded at all — so i basically reached the conclusion that somebody was going to die that night. sirens wail does your fire extinguisher work? it's out? i used it all up — - i can't put the fire out. sirens wail watch out. the car has hit a tree. the driver was thrown into bushes nearby. he died from his injuries. i'm very fortunate to have walked away from that wreck with as little injury as i did. you've seen pictures of the car — there was not much left of it. in the scheme of things, to have walked away from that wreck is very fortunate. one of the first people on the scene pulled andrew out of the car.

he also told police what's happened. did anybody see what happened? any of you guys see what happened? wait — that's not the driver? did you see where the driver went? oh, the driver is the person in the bushes? despite the man's testimony, the police suspect andrew was, in fact, the driver. there was no way that that's the passenger. the passenger side of the vehicle is all smashed in. there's no way the passenger survived that. that's the driver. that guy, the driver. he's saying he's not the driver, but people are already saying that he's the driver. after telling the police what happened, the man left the scene. if this guy was involved in the vehicle, he was driving. do we know where this person is who pulled him out? no, that's who we're trying to find. -

andrew suffered injuries including broken bones in his hand and right hip. upon being released from hospital, not a whole lot happened. nothing really happened until about 2.5 years later. in november of 2019, i was indicted for vehicular homicide. christopher o'brien was one of the defence lawyers who took on andrew's case. the charge was a reckless driving with death, so it's called a vehicular homicide, but it's that he was driving at such speed and so recklessly that it killed the guy in his car. so, it's a serious charge? quite, yes — it's punishable by up to 15 years of prison. sirens wail i don't think the gravity of the situation really hit me because obviously, i knew what happened — i was there. and it never really occurred to me that they would be able to convince a jury that

i was actually driving. andrew's only hope was for his legal team to track down the man who pulled him from the car. this unknown man could prove andrew wasn't driving. we printed up pictures of him off of the body cam, handed them out at every shop, every, you know, at starbucks downtown, put it on social media and no—one knew who he was. chris and his colleagues convinced a controversial facial recognition company to license their technology and help find the witness. they ran a search of this image from the police body cam footage using artificial intelligence. this ai popped him up in, like, 3—5 seconds. it wasjust... pictures just popping up. pop. p0p. p0p- like here he is, like, here you are. this is the guy.

it was him, every one. it was wild — it was like hitting the lottery. over four years after the crash, chris and his team finally found their key witness. vince ramirez. were you surprised that he was being charged with vehicular homicide? 0h, iwas. i was really surprised because i remember telling them what happened. it's like, wow, i can't believe this is going on. i thought it was case closed, all right, you know, he wasn't the driver. but it was a shock to me, it really was. what do you remember about where he was in the car? i remember he was in the passenger seat but he was mangled up where, like, that side definitely had him crushed in with the seatbelt on, so it took me a while to take it off and try to get his feet and body over the centre console to get him out of the vehicle. so, he was definitely in the passenger seat? yes. we knew at that point

we were going to win this case and within an hour of him giving his testimony and his deposition, the case was dropped. they called me that afternoon and said, hey, it was — - you know, it went as expected and they dropped the case. i how did you feel? i mean, it was a huge weight lifted. - after spending years facing a potential prison sentence, andrew could finally move on with his life. i'm happy that he reached out to me so we can clear his name for something he didn't do. we asked the fort myers police department in florida to comment on andrew's case, but they didn't respond. the facial recognition technology that andrew's lawyers used is new york—based clearview ai. the company has been fined over and over again for scraping

billions of users' photos in countries including the uk, greece, italy and france. clearview is perhaps the most famous and controversial facial recognition system in the world. critics say a controversial start—up poses a new and profound threat to everyone's privacy. a company called clearview ai has the largest known facial. recognition databasel of images in the us — larger than the fbi's. wow. does it work? yeah, it works. i'm looking over at newjersey. plays guitar the company is run by this man, hoan ton—that. he's the eccentric founder of clearview ai — a privately owned company that promises the most comprehensive image search solutions in the world. i haven't played that for like a few years, too! i want to find out how

many pictures the system could find of me. take a selfie. 0k. take any face you want. wow, and instantly, yeah, thatjust comes up. as you scroll down, there will be photos that are less similar, or if you see a plus one... this is all me. clearview scours the internet for images. a powerful algorithm compares size, shape and distance between facial features to find potential matches. i don't know where that is. it's wild how many pictures are just out there on the open web. the search finds pictures i've literally never seen before. i'm in the back of someone�*s profile picture and it still finds me. fascinating. that is, once again, extraordinary. i don't know where that is and it's picked me up because i am right in the back there. it doesn't need to be a picture that you uploaded or your friends uploaded, it's just if you're in the back of a picture, you can still be found. it is a really accurate technology. how many images

is this scraping? are in the database? in the database, there is about 30 billion images. because i guess the debate is, some say this is just google for faces and other people say this is going to change privacy as we know it. it's both. i mean it really is google for faces — that's exactly how it works — but i do think it is a big change in the fact that people can be identified with just a photo. and what we're trying to do is figure out what is the most compelling pro—social use case. and i think for law enforcement and government usage, it's a total game changer in the ability to keep us — all of us — safe together. clearview says they've been used by hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the us but there's no official record of which police forces use this tech. one police force we do know that uses it, though, is miami pd.

oh, there we go. you got something? yep. we are on a ride along with officerjack perez. what's been reported ? it is a bailout — i don't know if it's a stolen vehicle or a robbery vehicle. i want to see how facial recognition could potentially help the cops fight crime. do you still get the adrenaline when you are going to these things? you just become smarter, because i'm older and i don't wanna get into (bleep). someone has reported their car as being stolen. he went to do a traffic stop and hejumped out of the car and ran. dozens of armed police are circling the area, searching houses for the perpetrator. they believe he may be armed. so, the police here think that there might be a person who's hiding in one of these houses, so they're being very careful. they're going to basically take this gate apart before they go in.

we'rejumping over right now. oh, they arejumping over it right now? speaks spanish can you open the door? the cops didn't have a photo of the perpetrator. we didn't find him. this would be an excellent one for facial recognition. if we had those cameras up and got a picture of the offender, they could go to the victim and show a photo line—up and say, "ok, here's a photo line—up. do you see the person that robbed you?" "oh yeah, this guy." we got that off facial recognition. armando aguilar is the head of investigations at miami pd. the force pays clearview

for access to their database. we investigate crimes that are heinous in nature, we investigate crimes that — to where sometimes, it's difficult to get support from eyewitnesses, support from the public — for many reasons, because of perhaps loyalty to the people carrying out the crimes, fear of retribution for cooperating with the police. is there any crime that you can't use this for here? that we cannot use it for? mmm. no. as long as it is a violation of a criminal statute, our detectives and our analysts are allowed to use it. so, it's shoplifting all the way up to murder? correct, yes. the bbc can reveal that clearview has been by american law enforcement nearly a million times.

and there are many other systems in use. but what happens when it doesn't work? in 2018, this man walked into a shop in new york and stole some socks before appearing to wave box cutters at a member of staff. caitlinjacklin is the lawyer for the man the police believed was the perpetrator. he wants to remain anonymous, but has agreed for caitlin to speak out on his behalf. because it was a theft plus a weapon, it was charged as first degree robbery. that means if you are convicted of it it is a pretty hefty prison sentence, my client would have been looking at between 5—25 years for essentially stealing six socks. the main witness was a security guard, sometimes referred to as a loss prevention

officer in the us. what we learned was that shortly after this theft happened, a detective from nypd went and met with the loss prevention officer and said, "we want to see the surveillance," and took a screen grab of the face of the person that stole the socks, and the detective told the officer we're going to put this in facial recognition software. so, essentially, when i got was a piece of paper that had a screenshot from a surveillance lens and my client's mugshot that said "possible match". they don't do a photo line—up, they don't do any kind of better identification procedure, theyjust shoot him a text and say, "is this the guy?" so at this point, imagine you are the loss prevention officer, he says, "yes, that's the guy," but of course he did — you'd have to be telling the detective your hi—tech software does not work, that's not the person, it is such a suggestive way to do the id. shortly after that,

my client got arrested. on the day of the robbery, caitlin�*s client had an alibi. his son was born that day. he was at the hospital. the birth happened within a few hours of the robbery, so not at the exact same time, but in order to believe that you had the right person, you have to believe that on the way to the birth of his child, my client stopped at a big box store to steal a sixpack of socks and then immediately went to the hospital for the birth of his child. itjust wasn't him, he did not do it. caitlin�*s client was sent to jail for five months awaiting trial. he agreed to plead guilty so that he could be released. today, he still maintains his innocence. the only way for him to get out and get home to his newborn baby was to take a plea, and that's exactly what he ultimately did. it's also a way for the police and the prosecutors not to really have to investigate or sit with the fact that

this might have got it wrong. the nypd told us they had not taken enforcement action based solely on identification of a possible facial recognition match. and it's important emphasise that clearview ai's technology was not used in this case. the police used different software. but it does throw up a crucial question — how accurate is facial recognition technology? clearview will often say that it's almost 100% accurate, but that's on mugshot, not photos taken outside like cctv or body—cam footage. so, we thought we'd put it to the test. we took a range of different photos to see whether clearview could find me.

we took some pictures, sort of, like, progressively more and more difficult. so we have, like — there is one of me with glasses on, one of me with a mask on, looking at the camera. sometimes blurry ones work, sometimes they don't, it's tricky. but we'll give it a try. the algorithm found me in some of the shots, but not in others. none of me wearing a mask were found. when they are higher quality, they have a higher chance of making a hit. so the accuracy depends on the quality of the picture? that's why we have that warning when we say this is a lower quality image, so take extra care when taking a look at the results. a trained investigator would be able to see this result, get more information. it's up to them do their research, because if you look at the first folder, there is no name associated — you have to click the links and find out more. the police argue that they

don'tjust rely on facial recognition to make an arrest. so, we treat a match from any one of our facial recognition platforms as a tip. we don't run out and make an arrest based on that tip. our detectives logged about a 40% positive identification rate across all of our facial recognition searches. we're talking about — we got this match, detectives investigated and then reported back to our real—time crime centre that, yes, the person that you sent me is a match was in fact the person we established probable cause to arrest. a 40% positive identification rate is a very different figure to clea rview�*s claim of almost 100% accuracy. hoan ton—that doesn't seem to want his technology tested in court. our view is it's going to be better if we don't have facial recognition used as evidence in court, because the investigators are using other methods to also verify. shouldn't it be interrogated in court, if it is being used

to find people? we're happy to testify how the algorithms work, how accurate they are, but any of these mistakes have been made with facial recognition, and none of them made with clearview, have come down to poor policing or investigative work, not checking or not having other people look at the results of the facial recognition — just basic stuff. have there been any mistakes from the police using clearview? not that we know of. in many places in the us, the police often don't have to divulge whether they even use facial recognition. we have no idea how many people have been arrested because of this technology. but a few cities have pushed back. in san francisco, the police�*s use of facial recognition technology is banned. matthew guariglia works for the electronic frontier foundation, which pushed for the ban.

part of the problem with facial recognition is notjust that it's invasive, wrong, but also that the police departments themselves are incredibly opaque about how and when it's used and the companies are opaque about how the technology actually works, so whether you are in court or not, and whether you are questioning how the police use it, how it works from the companies, it's often very hard for defence attorneys, these organisations or concerned citizens to find out when and how it is being used and how it works. it's hard to know how many people have been victims of mistaken identity, but the few we do know of almost always involve african americans. the technology is racially biased, the technology has been known to misidentify black people in the united states, and also, because it is these communities that are most subject to massive amounts of police surveillance. government use of facial recognition is inaccurate, it's dangerous, it is a huge problem for civil liberties and civil rights, and it

absolutely needs to be banned. hoan ton—that accepts bias can be a problem but believes the technology needs to be regulated, not banned. we engage with lawmakers a lot, it is really up to them to decide with the regulations should be. yeah, i think racial bias is a really important issue to look at. i am a person of mixed race myself — i am half asian and australian, so when we look at making the algorithm more accurate, we are always thinking about all these ethnicities, so southeast asians, asians, african phases to make sure african faces to make sure the algorithm is not biased, and i think there are two parts to bias — there's bias in the policing world and there's bias in the algorithms, so we worked really hard to make sure that this algorithm works across all demographics as best as possible. facial recognition technology may be controversial, but it's undoubtedly

part of fighting crime in the future. it's up to lawmakers to strike a balance between the battle for justice and our right to privacy. hello. on saturday, the temperature reached 20 degrees celsius in a few locations across the uk. but in northern england and parts of scotland, it felt chilly. sunday will feel a little warmer in these areas, but we are expecting some showers. and if we have a look at the satellite picture, there's a lot of cloud lurking around the uk. you can see it here, particularly around western areas. but the air is coming

in from the south. it's a relatively mild air mass. this is what that yellow colour is indicating. so a milder current of air all the way from the southern climes. here's the forecast then for the early hours, an extensive cloud with showers right from the word go, not necessarily in east anglia and the southeast here. we will have had clear spells overnight. it's also a little colder in london and norwich, around 4, 5, 6 degrees, but plenty of cloud and showers through the morning into the afternoon. let's have a look at a snapshot at 2pm. so across scotland, you can see where the showers are in the western isles, some in central scotland, a few in the lowlands. thunderstorms possible in the afternoon across northern ireland, even some downpours, showers around merseyside, into lancashire, parts of wales, the south—west of england and one or two showers brewing elsewhere. but notice the extreme south—east, east anglia and lincolnshire, actually some sunshine here, a dry day, the highest temperatures, too. and look how much warmer it's going to be across northern england and parts of scotland. the lower temperatures

will actually be out towards the west and the south—west here where we will have extensive cloud and the showers and that cloud lingers into sunday evening. let's have a look at bank holiday monday now. so through the night into monday, weather fronts across the uk, but we are fairly close to high pressure out towards the south—west here. so a pretty decent day. we could have some showers in the south—east on bank holiday monday. also notice that the wind arrows is, air is coming in from the north across the far north of scotland. so really chilly in lerwick, six degrees, around eight degrees in stornoway, but in glasgow it's 15, in the midlands around 16 degrees celsius. so all in all, not a bad bank holiday monday on the way and then midweek, high pressure is close by and that basically means settled dry weather and that's reflected in the outlook. you can see wednesday and thursday there, sunny skies for cardiff and also for london. that's it for me. have a great sunday.

live from washington, this is bbc news. the british foreign office has confirmed that the final uk evacuation flight from sudanin final uk evacuation flight from sudan in the coming hours. and withjust a week sudan in the coming hours. and with just a week to go until the coronation, it is revealed the coronation, it is revealed the public will be asked to swear allegiance to king charles. plus a man hunt continues for a suspected gunman after five people were killed at a home in texas. it is good to have you with ours. we start here in