76% of Iowa residents incarcerated for identity theft as chain reaction in AI criminal justice system spirals out of control
This keeps happening! Yet another report of the HOOSDAT AI software being led astray, this time with dramatic consequences.
“You know that saying one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel? Like that, except this time one bad apple told us the rest of the apples were tarantulas. And not a barrel, pretty much the whole state,” said Iowa FBI spokesperson Shel Waflhaus.*
The trouble began with a fake Facebook profile. The counterfeit profile claimed to be that of Tew “Bogo” Ferrwun but was not. The fake profile contained pictures from Ferrwun’s real profile though, and quickly began tagging all the faces wrong.
Whoever it was picked strangers in the background of each photo and tagged them as Ferrwun’s friends. These strangers were anything but random, however. Many of them appear to have been following Ferrwun’s friends and family around for months. Several of them were logging into many accounts under different names.
Once they were tagged incorrectly, the strangers used Facebook’s facial verification module to access Ferrwun’s friend’s profiles and tag each other in more copied photos. “I’m not sure who thought it would be a good idea to use photo tagging to verify people’s identities,” said Waflhaus.
“Facebook would never actually create a login system based on photo tagging and facial recognition, because that would be incredibly dumb.” he continued. “Both are so error prone and beg to be hacked? But it’s fine for radiation to make this up for this article.”
“Look in a freaking mirror,” said one reader. “You came up with it.”
“Pick up your freaking mail, while you’re at it,” said another. “You are so lazy it’s dangerous!”
“There’s a reason why your license is in that little see-through pocket in your wallet,” said a third reader. “Without it you’d probably forget your own name.”
“Trying getting out and about and meet some new people, said a fourth reader. “Introduce yourself as the guy that arrested Iowa.”
“What I don’t know, I don’t know,” said a fifth reader. “But at least I know that I don’t know it, instead of running around thinking I do and arresting people for no reason.”
Hmm.
When the real profile holders logged on, HOOSDAT automatically filed identity theft charges against them, because by then there were far more incorrect tags of the wrong faces than the right ones.
As the false tagfest went on, entire families were wiped out as if by bulldozer, then entire towns. No one questioned the false taggers.
“They all seemed like very cool people,” said one guy at a gas station where I got a soda. “Very hip, no matter who they were imitating. I think that just made people believe them more.”
“One hundred and eighty-eight people tagged this middle-aged guy as me,” complained one 12-year-old girl. “What are my friends going to think?”
No one knows, but they are probably also facing charges, so probably they won’t think too much about it.
Mobs of people from out of state poured into the packed police stations, making the confusion even worse, intentionally it seemed.
“I think they’re from Nebraska,” said one identity theft suspect in a Hawkeyes T-shirt. “But they could also be Minnesotans.”
Authorities are having no trouble tracking the citizens down, but can’t get them out of their homes.
“You find them right where they’re supposed to be according to HOOSDAT,” said one mob that was helping out with the arrests. “But we just dropped a hand grenade on this one guy, and it had no effect in terms of moving him.
“Made him quiet for a bit, but in a few minutes he was back at it.”
Not sure what he was back at, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
Obviously a good method for identifying the victims would resolve this mess very quickly, but no one is sure what that method is.
“I wish there was some way we could see when the same face was logging in with multiple names,” said Waflhaus. “Maybe we’ll try that next.”
“I was going to ask a friend to ask a friend (for a good method for identifying people),” said the mob. “But now I have no idea who will answer when I call.”
*Haven’t spent much time in Iowa, I just drove through once. Needed a place name.