4 ms·

How likely is it actually that out of the set of 116 people who look like you from your your state (which I see as basically a random sample of 116 people, unle

How likely is it actually that out of the set of 116 people who look like you from your your state (which I see as basically a random sample of 116 people, unless you have a tendency to gravitate people who look like yourself toward yourself...), one of them was in the same area as you, at the same time that a crime was committed against you there?

peter422 7y ago
The real question is how many of those random people could conclusively clear themselves with an alibi. If 20% of those people don't remember or can't conclusively prove where they were... You now have a ton of suspects that each are just as likely the criminal and obviously at most one of them could have committed the crime. Yes if you can narrow it down to 100 people and then further confirm their identity with DNA or other real evidence that is potentially useful (and only potentially... It may waste your time). But for any sort of petty crime it seems like it will almost always do more harm than good.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  > The real question is how many of those random people could conclusively clear themselves with an alibi No, that's not the real question. The real question is how frequently such people would even exist in the first place, which is what I was asking. We're not trying to find solutions to non-problems here.
pixl97 7y ago
Now likely, well based on the number of false convictions we seem to get in the US legal system, I can tell you that the probability is non-zero. Especially since there may be a genetic component of people looking the same. Chasing down all the Smiths in your neighborhood can increase the rates of false detection.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> How likely is it actually that out of the set of 116 people who look like you from your your state (which I see as basically a random sample of 116 people, unless you have a tendency to gravitate people who look like yourself toward yourself...), one of them was in the same area as you, at the same time that a crime was committed against you there? That's going to depend a lot on how stringently you define "in the area" and "the time of the crime" as well as things like population density and demographics. For example, if the perpetrator is a particular race and so consequently are all the facial recognition matches, and the state's population has particular races concentrated in particular areas, expect that to affect the probability in a way that leads to more false positives all around, because it's then effectively the case that people with similar faces tend to live near each other. But the really perfidious thing about all this is that it's not just facial recognition and cell phone matches. Suppose the chance of a random person out of a hundred with a similar face being in the same area is "only" 5%. That would be the case if there were around 500 people in the vicinity (not unusual in an urban area) in a state with a million people, and then around 5% of your convicted criminals would be innocent. But we're not just checking faces and cell phones, we also check all kinds of things like internet history, family and work connections, financial and purchasing history, etc. Then we come to find out that one of the facial recognition matches did a web search for Halloween masks in October of last year and the co-conspirators whose faces we don't have were wearing masks, and the same person has a low paying job, a fair amount of debt and a second cousin with a twenty year old conviction for marijuana possession, and the cousin's cell phone was in the vicinity of the crime. It's a pile of circumstantial nonsense. It's all selection bias and dependent variables. Everybody searches for Halloween masks around Halloween. Each of your hundred odd facial recognition matches has a hundred odd family members, there were a few hundred people in the vicinity, you start multiplying numbers like that and you get coincidence matches. The random cousin who hangs out in the same areas as crimes are committed is not unlikely to have a checkered past. But all the jury sees is a huge pile of evidence. Which gets bigger the more mass surveillance there is, independent of guilt or innocence, because more surveillance can uncover more coincidences. (And then they pick up your cousin and find drugs on him again, and suddenly he's testifying against you for a lesser sentence even though you haven't even seen him in five years.)

peter422 7y ago

The real question is how many of those random people could conclusively clear themselves with an alibi. If 20% of those people don't remember or can't conclusively prove where they were... You now have a ton of suspects that each are just as likely the criminal and obviously at most one of them could have committed the crime. Yes if you can narrow it down to 100 people and then further confirm their identity with DNA or other real evidence that is potentially useful (and only potentially... It may waste your time). But for any sort of petty crime it seems like it will almost always do more harm than good.

mehrdadn 7y ago
> The real question is how many of those random people could conclusively clear themselves with an alibi No, that's not the real question. The real question is how frequently such people would even exist in the first place, which is what I was asking. We're not trying to find solutions to non-problems here.

pixl97 7y ago

Now likely, well based on the number of false convictions we seem to get in the US legal system, I can tell you that the probability is non-zero. Especially since there may be a genetic component of people looking the same. Chasing down all the Smiths in your neighborhood can increase the rates of false detection.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> How likely is it actually that out of the set of 116 people who look like you from your your state (which I see as basically a random sample of 116 people, unless you have a tendency to gravitate people who look like yourself toward yourself...), one of them was in the same area as you, at the same time that a crime was committed against you there? That's going to depend a lot on how stringently you define "in the area" and "the time of the crime" as well as things like population density and demographics. For example, if the perpetrator is a particular race and so consequently are all the facial recognition matches, and the state's population has particular races concentrated in particular areas, expect that to affect the probability in a way that leads to more false positives all around, because it's then effectively the case that people with similar faces tend to live near each other. But the really perfidious thing about all this is that it's not just facial recognition and cell phone matches. Suppose the chance of a random person out of a hundred with a similar face being in the same area is "only" 5%. That would be the case if there were around 500 people in the vicinity (not unusual in an urban area) in a state with a million people, and then around 5% of your convicted criminals would be innocent. But we're not just checking faces and cell phones, we also check all kinds of things like internet history, family and work connections, financial and purchasing history, etc. Then we come to find out that one of the facial recognition matches did a web search for Halloween masks in October of last year and the co-conspirators whose faces we don't have were wearing masks, and the same person has a low paying job, a fair amount of debt and a second cousin with a twenty year old conviction for marijuana possession, and the cousin's cell phone was in the vicinity of the crime. It's a pile of circumstantial nonsense. It's all selection bias and dependent variables. Everybody searches for Halloween masks around Halloween. Each of your hundred odd facial recognition matches has a hundred odd family members, there were a few hundred people in the vicinity, you start multiplying numbers like that and you get coincidence matches. The random cousin who hangs out in the same areas as crimes are committed is not unlikely to have a checkered past. But all the jury sees is a huge pile of evidence. Which gets bigger the more mass surveillance there is, independent of guilt or innocence, because more surveillance can uncover more coincidences. (And then they pick up your cousin and find drugs on him again, and suddenly he's testifying against you for a lesser sentence even though you haven't even seen him in five years.)