12 ms·

If I understand the story correctly, they had the suspect in custody and yet failed to positively ID him, relying on an ID he had stolen from an innocent man na

If I understand the story correctly, they had the suspect in custody and yet failed to positively ID him, relying on an ID he had stolen from an innocent man named Ousmane Bah. The ID had no photo and was labeled "not to be used for identification". SIS filed a police report which said they had video evidence showing the perpetrator. They then put out a "BOLO" with the innocent man's name, had him arrested, figured out they have the wrong guy, do nothing about it and had him arrested again. When Bah appeared in court to answer charges and Apple was asked to present the video that would have cleared Bah, Apple claimed that the video had been deleted. The video was later found by Bah's attorney during discovery. This happened more than once. A warrant was issued for Bah’s arrest and contained the photo of the imposter. Bah was arrested even though the he doesn't resemble the imposter, other than being Black. Prosecution against Bah continued in multiple states through June 2019. Hmmm, seems like a lot of people involved in this case should be fired, including the Apple Employees, SIS Employees and Police officers, reguardless of whatever other outcomes there are.

ashtonkem 5y ago
Seems like some Apple employees need to be thrown in jail for lying to the court.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  LOL, if only justice worked that way.
  - tzmudzin 5y ago
    Well, maybe it should. I'm not in favor of handing out prison sentences, but that's probably what the victim faced. Eye-for-eye is a bad strategy, but no consequences for such accusations is not a solution.
  - jeltz 5y ago
    On paper it does, what they did is obviously criminal under current laws. The issue is that these crimes are almost never prosecuted.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
> Hmmm, seems like a lot of people involved in this case should be fired, I would like to see people who cause others’ freedom and time to be stolen from them because of laziness or malice to be charged with felonies.
- walkedaway 5y ago
  > I would like to see people who cause others’ freedom and time to be stolen from them because of laziness or malice to be charged with felonies. Agree. Can we start with Gavin Newsom?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- garyfirestorm 5y ago
  Accuser1 - Sir this man stole from us Police1 - Yeah we saw the ID and stuff and some video Innocent Man - where's the video, coz i was in different state Accuser1 - we deleted it - poker face Police - poker face Innocent1 - poker face Court - ok bye c u later
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    In a sane world, that would be destruction of evidence. You shouldn’t be able to tell the court evidence exists and then destroy it before you let anyone else examine it.
    - walterbell 5y ago
      Is there a blockchain vendor that could notarize and archive video evidence?
      - Gh0stRAT 5y ago
        It's a lot more complicated than that due to edge cases like format conversion, resolution downscaling, chunking, etc but people are working on a solution in this vein: https://contentauthenticity.org/ https://contentauthenticity.org/ Full-disclosure: I work (on completely unrelated stuff) at one of the organizations involved
cosmojg 5y ago
> Hmmm, seems like a lot of people involved in this case should be fired, including the Apple Employees, SIS Employees and Police officers, reguardless of whatever other outcomes there are. How might a government systematically disincentivize this sort of malicious and negligent behavior without it backfiring? And why hasn't it happened already? I imagine the matter has been thoroughly explored by legal scholars, but I'm having trouble finding publications. Can someone point me in the right direction?
- aszantu 5y ago
  Stop punishment for simple mistakes, it starts with parents and school. I'm in a safe environment where i can say i made a mistake and document it. And still i have a hard time doing it because how i grew up. It was much safer to be quiet or lie and get away than trusting authorities or parents to not punish me. But removing that threat would change how the system works and how ppl deal with mistakes.
  - rjzzleep 5y ago
    Interesting, and yet all the people that worked for me massively respect me when I point out a mistake I did towards them in front of everyone else. It's probably related to the fact that I tend to be very strong when making those decision, but when I publicly announce my mistake in front of their peers it builds trust. I basically learned that because I hated the bosses that would take credit for their subordinates ideas and then blame them when something went wrong, so I'm trying to do the opposite.
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    It's not a 'simple mistake.'
  - jeltz 5y ago
    Yes, but we should still punish negligence (and in my opinion harshly). That way people are encouraged to fix mistakes instead of ignoring them like they did here.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Trias11 5y ago
Let me summarize it - Apple is going to fork out 8 figures, possibly sealed, not admit to anything. Done
- carschno 5y ago
  And, more importantly, not going to change anything. Good luck to the next guy.
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    Companies, police and politicians always freak out when someone doesn't want money, but just want them to admit to doing something wrong. Getting a $1Mill is easier than getting an apology.
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      That seems a bit of an overstretch. I have heard far more fake "We are sorry", than I heard of $1Mill compensation. At least the money would be real.
      - eitland 5y ago
        I think the difference is between a fake "We are sorry you feel this way" and a real "we messed up big time on this. For starters, here's what we will do to make sure it doesn't happen again".
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        Getting a fake apology is easy, getting actual admission of wrongdoing is hard. The former is embarrassing, the latter can be used as evidence in later lawsuits. This is precisely the reason why criminal prosecutions of companies result in the company admitting no wrong but coincidentally agreeing to a 8 to 9 digit fine.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Well of course. Getting the state to admit it was in the wrong is a precursor to get the state to stop doing something and the state absolutely hates giving up power.
gfaure 5y ago
It was new to me too, but "BOLO" turns out to be US police jargon for "be on the lookout".
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Americans love to talk like cops, soldiers, and spies.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    Do cops not talk like cops in other countries?
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    I found the comment interesting. I disagree that it is just Americans. In real terms language evolves on its own and people tend to imitate the pieces they find useful for one reason or another. I remember living in the old country as the Iron Curtain fell. All of a sudden, adding English words into just about any conversation was a thing to do. Some of it was, because word equivalents were not quite ready yet; some of it was fashion. I think cop porn is just another language phase in US.
teekert 5y ago
"Hmmm, seems like a lot of people involved in this case should be fired," Perhaps, or a culture should be created where there should be no fear of negative repercussions for taking ownership of something? Seems like a typical organizational thing where responsibilities are not clear and people are afraid to take it. Edit, not saying this is not unforgivable. Just saying a critical look at the organizational level would be good.
- jjk166 5y ago
  And the key to creating such a culture is to make the consequences of hiding mistakes substantially worse than the consequences of owning them. So either you reward people for making mistakes and coming forward (creating a perverse incentive to make mistakes) or you punish those who hide mistakes especially hard. Bonus points if in the process of punishing people who hide mistakes, you also remove those people from the organization, thus increasing the proportion of people in the organization who do not hide mistakes. Firing these people is both just and pragmatic.
yreg 5y ago
So which part is the 'unreliable face recognition tech'?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  Thank you. I think we got sold a story about wrongful arrest just because Apple was involved. The story is still horrific, but I am mildly miffed.
himinlomax 5y ago
> Hmmm, seems like a lot of people involved in this case should be fired, "Fired"? This is tampering with evidence, contempt of court, filing false reports and so on, all done repeatedly. People need to go to jail, because people go to jail for those crimes and for lesser crimes as well.
- dagaci 5y ago
  Its outrageous. To coverup a lesser incompetance of not validating who the imposter really was, they tried to frame the innocent Ousmane Bah by deleting the video footage. If Ousmane Bah didnt have a good lawyer he would be in jail and have his life destroyed already, such actions like this should be treated as a crime of falsifying evidence at least.
  - xorfish 5y ago
    There are a lot of cases with the innocent project where an innocent person was lucky to be proven innocent. There must be many more that are not lucky. Around 4.1% of people on death row are estimated to be innocent. https://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7230 https://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7230 I have a hard time imaging, that the rate is lower for lesser crimes where the victims of the justice system can be coerced to accept a "lesser" punishment.
    - syshum 5y ago
      There are because proving innocence is very hard... That is why more pressure needs to put on the Legal System to only convict on an actual "beyond reasonable doubt" standard, unfortunately today some juries seem to operate on more of a preponderance of the evidence or worse "ehh he did something wrong" standard Personally I believe the 4.1% estimate to be pretty low, and it one of the reasons I strongly oppose capital punishment, I simply do not trust our legal system enough to give them the power and authority to kill people
      - JTbane 5y ago
        >Personally I believe the 4.1% estimate to be pretty low, and it one of the reasons I strongly oppose capital punishment, I simply do not trust our legal system enough to give them the power and authority to kill people Agreed, because humans are fallible, and a jury is made of humans The courts can always release on appeal. You can't un-kill someone
franga2000 5y ago
> The ID had no photo and was labeled "not to be used for identification". Can someone explain the logic of this? What is the purpose of an ID that shouldn't be used for identification? And why would anyone in their right mind issue a non-biometric ID in the first place?
- laszlokorte 5y ago
  Like a membership card of some store/club only used for collecting discounts.
  - franga2000 5y ago
    Ah, I guess that makes sense. The mention of police and security made me automatically make the jump to "government ID".
- manicdee 5y ago
  It’s basically a membership card all it shows is your name and member number, might even be used as a stored value card for printers, or as a door lock RFID/NFC card.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - addingnumbers 5y ago
    How are you going to use a learners permit as an NFC card, it's just a half sheet of plain old wood-pulp printer paper
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  The article says it was a temporary drivers permit. This is what you get in the US while you're learning to drive but before you have a full license. It's usually just a piece of paper, and you can't drive alone in the car with it.
  - 5y ago
1cvmask 5y ago
BOLO is a police/FBI term for Be On the LOokout
- tchalla 5y ago
  Thank you for posting the full form of the acronym. It helps keep the conversation structured. I wish more people would do it.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    I have this same feeling towards a lot of tech blogs/articles/etc. The people writing use an acronym daily, yet people not in that field have much less familiarity with the same grouping of letters. Journalism/authors has (had?) a rule about clearly defining the acronym the first time it was used, and then just use the acronym for the remainder. Now, that definition seems left out altogether. It could be a sign of lack of formal training in writing, but I know I was taught it in high school level grammar class. <shrugs>
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      The web provides a solution to this problem. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/abbr https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ab...
- OJFord 5y ago
  > LOokout Not that it really matters/makes a difference, but presumably it's 'LookOut' - at least, that seems less weird/forced into a specific desired acronym. As a noun 'lookout' (or 'look-out') is from verb phrase 'look out' anyway.
  - chias 5y ago
    LoOkout
hutzlibu 5y ago
Kafka's Trial comes to mind.
fundad 5y ago
Something like this happens so often there should be a legal theory exploring it. I'll ask my kindergartener what he's learned.

ashtonkem 5y ago

Seems like some Apple employees need to be thrown in jail for lying to the court.

encryptluks2 5y ago
LOL, if only justice worked that way.
- tzmudzin 5y ago
  Well, maybe it should. I'm not in favor of handing out prison sentences, but that's probably what the victim faced. Eye-for-eye is a bad strategy, but no consequences for such accusations is not a solution.
- jeltz 5y ago
  On paper it does, what they did is obviously criminal under current laws. The issue is that these crimes are almost never prosecuted.

lotsofpulp 5y ago

> Hmmm, seems like a lot of people involved in this case should be fired, I would like to see people who cause others’ freedom and time to be stolen from them because of laziness or malice to be charged with felonies.

walkedaway 5y ago
> I would like to see people who cause others’ freedom and time to be stolen from them because of laziness or malice to be charged with felonies. Agree. Can we start with Gavin Newsom?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
garyfirestorm 5y ago
Accuser1 - Sir this man stole from us Police1 - Yeah we saw the ID and stuff and some video Innocent Man - where's the video, coz i was in different state Accuser1 - we deleted it - poker face Police - poker face Innocent1 - poker face Court - ok bye c u later
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  In a sane world, that would be destruction of evidence. You shouldn’t be able to tell the court evidence exists and then destroy it before you let anyone else examine it.
  - walterbell 5y ago
    Is there a blockchain vendor that could notarize and archive video evidence?
    - Gh0stRAT 5y ago
      It's a lot more complicated than that due to edge cases like format conversion, resolution downscaling, chunking, etc but people are working on a solution in this vein: https://contentauthenticity.org/ https://contentauthenticity.org/ Full-disclosure: I work (on completely unrelated stuff) at one of the organizations involved

cosmojg 5y ago

> Hmmm, seems like a lot of people involved in this case should be fired, including the Apple Employees, SIS Employees and Police officers, reguardless of whatever other outcomes there are. How might a government systematically disincentivize this sort of malicious and negligent behavior without it backfiring? And why hasn't it happened already? I imagine the matter has been thoroughly explored by legal scholars, but I'm having trouble finding publications. Can someone point me in the right direction?

aszantu 5y ago
Stop punishment for simple mistakes, it starts with parents and school. I'm in a safe environment where i can say i made a mistake and document it. And still i have a hard time doing it because how i grew up. It was much safer to be quiet or lie and get away than trusting authorities or parents to not punish me. But removing that threat would change how the system works and how ppl deal with mistakes.
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  Interesting, and yet all the people that worked for me massively respect me when I point out a mistake I did towards them in front of everyone else. It's probably related to the fact that I tend to be very strong when making those decision, but when I publicly announce my mistake in front of their peers it builds trust. I basically learned that because I hated the bosses that would take credit for their subordinates ideas and then blame them when something went wrong, so I'm trying to do the opposite.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  It's not a 'simple mistake.'
- jeltz 5y ago
  Yes, but we should still punish negligence (and in my opinion harshly). That way people are encouraged to fix mistakes instead of ignoring them like they did here.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago

Trias11 5y ago

Let me summarize it - Apple is going to fork out 8 figures, possibly sealed, not admit to anything. Done

carschno 5y ago
And, more importantly, not going to change anything. Good luck to the next guy.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  Companies, police and politicians always freak out when someone doesn't want money, but just want them to admit to doing something wrong. Getting a $1Mill is easier than getting an apology.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    That seems a bit of an overstretch. I have heard far more fake "We are sorry", than I heard of $1Mill compensation. At least the money would be real.
    - eitland 5y ago
      I think the difference is between a fake "We are sorry you feel this way" and a real "we messed up big time on this. For starters, here's what we will do to make sure it doesn't happen again".
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      Getting a fake apology is easy, getting actual admission of wrongdoing is hard. The former is embarrassing, the latter can be used as evidence in later lawsuits. This is precisely the reason why criminal prosecutions of companies result in the company admitting no wrong but coincidentally agreeing to a 8 to 9 digit fine.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Well of course. Getting the state to admit it was in the wrong is a precursor to get the state to stop doing something and the state absolutely hates giving up power.

gfaure 5y ago

It was new to me too, but "BOLO" turns out to be US police jargon for "be on the lookout".

pessimizer 5y ago
Americans love to talk like cops, soldiers, and spies.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  Do cops not talk like cops in other countries?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  I found the comment interesting. I disagree that it is just Americans. In real terms language evolves on its own and people tend to imitate the pieces they find useful for one reason or another. I remember living in the old country as the Iron Curtain fell. All of a sudden, adding English words into just about any conversation was a thing to do. Some of it was, because word equivalents were not quite ready yet; some of it was fashion. I think cop porn is just another language phase in US.

teekert 5y ago

"Hmmm, seems like a lot of people involved in this case should be fired," Perhaps, or a culture should be created where there should be no fear of negative repercussions for taking ownership of something? Seems like a typical organizational thing where responsibilities are not clear and people are afraid to take it. Edit, not saying this is not unforgivable. Just saying a critical look at the organizational level would be good.

jjk166 5y ago
And the key to creating such a culture is to make the consequences of hiding mistakes substantially worse than the consequences of owning them. So either you reward people for making mistakes and coming forward (creating a perverse incentive to make mistakes) or you punish those who hide mistakes especially hard. Bonus points if in the process of punishing people who hide mistakes, you also remove those people from the organization, thus increasing the proportion of people in the organization who do not hide mistakes. Firing these people is both just and pragmatic.

yreg 5y ago

So which part is the 'unreliable face recognition tech'?

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
Thank you. I think we got sold a story about wrongful arrest just because Apple was involved. The story is still horrific, but I am mildly miffed.

himinlomax 5y ago

> Hmmm, seems like a lot of people involved in this case should be fired, "Fired"? This is tampering with evidence, contempt of court, filing false reports and so on, all done repeatedly. People need to go to jail, because people go to jail for those crimes and for lesser crimes as well.

dagaci 5y ago
Its outrageous. To coverup a lesser incompetance of not validating who the imposter really was, they tried to frame the innocent Ousmane Bah by deleting the video footage. If Ousmane Bah didnt have a good lawyer he would be in jail and have his life destroyed already, such actions like this should be treated as a crime of falsifying evidence at least.
- xorfish 5y ago
  There are a lot of cases with the innocent project where an innocent person was lucky to be proven innocent. There must be many more that are not lucky. Around 4.1% of people on death row are estimated to be innocent. https://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7230 https://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7230 I have a hard time imaging, that the rate is lower for lesser crimes where the victims of the justice system can be coerced to accept a "lesser" punishment.
  - syshum 5y ago
    There are because proving innocence is very hard... That is why more pressure needs to put on the Legal System to only convict on an actual "beyond reasonable doubt" standard, unfortunately today some juries seem to operate on more of a preponderance of the evidence or worse "ehh he did something wrong" standard Personally I believe the 4.1% estimate to be pretty low, and it one of the reasons I strongly oppose capital punishment, I simply do not trust our legal system enough to give them the power and authority to kill people
    - JTbane 5y ago
      >Personally I believe the 4.1% estimate to be pretty low, and it one of the reasons I strongly oppose capital punishment, I simply do not trust our legal system enough to give them the power and authority to kill people Agreed, because humans are fallible, and a jury is made of humans The courts can always release on appeal. You can't un-kill someone

franga2000 5y ago

> The ID had no photo and was labeled "not to be used for identification". Can someone explain the logic of this? What is the purpose of an ID that shouldn't be used for identification? And why would anyone in their right mind issue a non-biometric ID in the first place?

laszlokorte 5y ago
Like a membership card of some store/club only used for collecting discounts.
- franga2000 5y ago
  Ah, I guess that makes sense. The mention of police and security made me automatically make the jump to "government ID".
manicdee 5y ago
It’s basically a membership card all it shows is your name and member number, might even be used as a stored value card for printers, or as a door lock RFID/NFC card.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- addingnumbers 5y ago
  How are you going to use a learners permit as an NFC card, it's just a half sheet of plain old wood-pulp printer paper
TechBro8615 5y ago
The article says it was a temporary drivers permit. This is what you get in the US while you're learning to drive but before you have a full license. It's usually just a piece of paper, and you can't drive alone in the car with it.
- 5y ago

1cvmask 5y ago

BOLO is a police/FBI term for Be On the LOokout

tchalla 5y ago
Thank you for posting the full form of the acronym. It helps keep the conversation structured. I wish more people would do it.
- dylan604 5y ago
  I have this same feeling towards a lot of tech blogs/articles/etc. The people writing use an acronym daily, yet people not in that field have much less familiarity with the same grouping of letters. Journalism/authors has (had?) a rule about clearly defining the acronym the first time it was used, and then just use the acronym for the remainder. Now, that definition seems left out altogether. It could be a sign of lack of formal training in writing, but I know I was taught it in high school level grammar class. <shrugs>
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    The web provides a solution to this problem. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/abbr https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ab...
OJFord 5y ago
> LOokout Not that it really matters/makes a difference, but presumably it's 'LookOut' - at least, that seems less weird/forced into a specific desired acronym. As a noun 'lookout' (or 'look-out') is from verb phrase 'look out' anyway.
- chias 5y ago
  LoOkout

hutzlibu 5y ago

Kafka's Trial comes to mind.

fundad 5y ago

Something like this happens so often there should be a legal theory exploring it. I'll ask my kindergartener what he's learned.