How technology can get you arrested for something you didn’t do

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Millions of people are arrested every year – approximately 7.36 million in 2022 alone. This seems quite abstract to most of us because most of us are not criminals and we assume that if we haven’t done anything wrong, we have nothing to worry about.

But there are at least two things wrong with this assumption. First of all, almost everyone does it something illegal in their lives that they consider a victimless crime or they just don’t realize it is illegal, so your chances of getting arrested one day may be higher than you think. Second, law enforcement and corporations are increasingly eliminating humans and relying on technologies like automation, facial recognition, and artificial intelligence (often in combination), and these technologies are flawed – truly flawed. And interacting with them can lead to false accusations and even arrests, even if you did absolutely nothing wrong. Here are seven ways you can get arrested Today without even thinking about the crime.

Self-service checkout

Self-service kiosks have been controversial and many retailers are reconsidering them, but they are still quite common. And if they make a mistake, you could be in big trouble. Consider the example of Olympic athlete Meagan Pettipiece, who purchased $176 worth of groceries at the self-checkout counter at Walmart. The kiosk she used was missing two products: ham and asparagus. Slip he did scan the items but the kiosk didn’t register them – she didn’t do anything wrong. However, police were called and searched her bag and found marijuana and prescription drugs, and she was arrested and charged with theft and possession of a controlled substance.

The charges were later dropped, but not before Pettipiece’s life was ruined: she resigned from her coaching job and suffered damage to her reputation that will remain with her forever. So next time you buy groceries at a self-checkout, make sure every item has been scanned.

Face recognition

Facial recognition technology is flawed and unreliable (often in very racist ways), but that doesn’t stop corporations and law enforcement from using it, unsurprisingly, and the results are disastrous. For example, Harvey Murphy Jr. was arrested when facial recognition software used by Macy’s and Sunglass Hut stores in Houston identified him as the perpetrator of an armed robbery. Murphy was in prison for two weeks, during which he was allegedly repeatedly attacked by other inmates. But Murphy wasn’t just innocent: he was It wasn’t even in Texas when the theft occurred. In fact, this happens a lot and can happen to you too if your facial recognition tool crashes and displays your name for no reason.

License plate cameras

Police use automatic license plate readers to identify cars involved in crimes. If a car is involved in, say, a robbery or shooting, readers can locate the license plate number and alert the police, who will then alert officers based on the make, model and license plate number of the car.

You can guess where this is going: license plate readers make mistakes. For example, in North Carolina, Jacqueline McNeill was arrested on suspicion of involvement in a shooting. The arrest was based on an automatic license plate reader that incorrectly identified her car as the one in question. She was held for several hours, interrogated and then released. She ultimately settled her lawsuit against the city for $60,000.

Invalid databases

If you’ve ever had any run-ins with the law that have been resolved – a case dismissed, a lawsuit settled – you may think your nightmare is over and you can go back to your life. However, case management is now increasingly automated, and the software that supports it is as buggy and unreliable as any other software. A few years ago in California, a new case management system suddenly started treating old arrest warrants as current, and there was a wave of false arrests because police received incorrect information. In other words, if a single piece of data in a complex database changes from 1 to 0, something you dealt with years ago could result in a new arrest.

Incorrect photo analysis

There’s really no such thing as privacy on the internet – all your files, photos, voicemails and messages are stored somewhereand someone has access to them, even if they are supposedly protected. Companies like Google, which see massive amounts of media flowing through their servers, often use automated scanning to identify and flag material that may be illegal, but when it gets wrong, it leaves a ruined life or two in its wake.

For example, in 2021, a father took photos of his toddler and sent them to a doctor for analysis. Google’s review algorithm flagged the photos and referred the man to law enforcement on suspicion of trafficking in child sexual abuse images. Police quickly cleared the man of any wrongdoing, but Google refused to reinstate his accounts. The lesson is to remember that anything you post, store, email or create on any internet-connected platform is not private and can easily be misinterpreted by a heartless algorithm, which could lead to arrest – or even worse.

Field drug test

Police often conduct field drug tests when they suspect someone is under the influence of controlled substances – approximately 773,000 of the 1.5 million drug arrests in this country are based on evidence collected during field tests. However, these tests are considered “presumptive” because the technology is not very reliable. The tests are cheap (costing about $2 each) and disposable, and they do such a laughably terrible job that they often misidentify everything from cotton candy to vitamins as drugs.

Clarice Doku was arrested in 2018 after a field drug test showed she was taking folic acid as ecstasy in hopes of getting pregnant. She and her husband spent two weeks in jail, she lost her job, he missed his citizenship ceremony and, of course, the charges were ultimately dropped.

Technology makes our lives easier. Until it becomes much, much more difficult, especially when it leads to a false arrest based solely on phantom data that you have no control over.