this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And saving kids is great! The problem is basically the epitome of the phrase, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

On the surface, a false positive identification isn't that bad. Validate the data and move on. Case closed, right? Not exactly.

It probably takes time to filter through false positive alerts and maybe some additional investigations are started. The biggest problem is that society naturally follows "guilty until proven innocent". If someone is caught up in a trafficking case, and they are actually innocent, their career and association with their existing social circles are basically done. That is regardless if they are innocent and that is horrible.

Also there is persistence of data. Once a person gets associated in these datasets, is probably near impossible to have that data removed. This could look really bad if it is found as part of an unrelated investigation and exposed. I won't even go into the invasion of privacy issues.

While it is great to catch actual bad people, possibly destroying the life of another is also bad. I really wish I could say that is a person is actually innocent they have nothing to worry about. That simply doesn't apply here.