JOHN GASS was certain he'd done nothing wrong. Yet there it was, in black and white: the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles had revoked his driving licence.
It took him nearly two weeks, numerous calls to the registry and a court hearing to put things right. For the 41-year-old it was a nightmare, threatening his livelihood as a professional driver. For the registry it was clear: Gass had committed fraud by applying for more than one driver's licence – caught thanks to a facial-recognition algorithm.
In Massachusetts, and most other US states, the headshots on millions of licences are scanned routinely to spot criminals, underage drivers, people using fake names, and those suspended from driving. Yet in Gass's case, originally reported by the Boston Globe , the computer had made a mistake. It was policing-by-algorithm gone wrong.
Over the past few years, law enforcement agencies have begun replacing human police ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.
