The Equation Of Security
Hey, how many of you there remember my famous Equation of Great Security??? Well, if you can’t remember it, mathematically put it is: Human Vigilance + Technology = Great Security. My biggest mantra is that in order for this equation to actually be solved, the left hand side of the equation both needs to be in balance. In other words, both are equally important, one cannot be greater than the other. But however, as we are seeing today, especially here in the Security environment here in the United States, there tends to be a much stronger emphasis placed on technology, and not so much on the human aspect of Security.
My hypothesis is that technology is technology, and is very much prone to errors and mistakes, even if heuristics or other types of artificial intelligence is used. Thus, there comes the strong need for human intervention, not only to see and witness things the technology cannot observe, but also to act as a backup, or sort of a counterbalance to the technology to make sure that innocent people are not apprehended, or even worst, convicted of a crime they have not committed. Well, today, I came across a news article which discusses a study in which even the human factor of the Security equation can be just as much prone to error as the technology.
It was conducted by the American Psychological Association, and here some of the inside goop into it: “An upcoming study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveals that the human factor in the process could lead to errors and false convictions of innocent people . . . "We knew from other psychological research that the all-too-human foibles of distraction, rushes to judgment, biases and expectations can't be avoided even by the most diligent professionals, so we were understandably concerned about the potential for error," said lead author Jason Tangen of The University of Queensland . . . Tangen, along with the other authors, set out to determine the likelihood of human error when dealing with fingerprints. They gave 37 qualified fingerprint experts and 37 novices pairs of fingerprints to examine and decide whether a simulated crime scene matched a potential suspect or not. Some of the print pairs belonged to the "criminal" while others were highly similar but actually belonged to an "innocent" person.” (SOURCE: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110511162536.htm).
Final Thoughts On Today’s Posting
So as you can see from the above quote, the forensics experts were given an equal amount of “qualified” fingerprints versus a set of “novice fingerprints”. There was also an equal balance of “criminal” versus “innocent” fingerprints as well. The results of the study, in my view were rather astounding. For example, the forensics experts had a very high success rate of matching the right fingerprint with the actual criminal, to be exact, it was about 92%. But, on the flip side of the coin, the forensics experts also mismatched the wrong fingerprint associated with the innocent person at an alarming 68% of the time.
If these results are extrapolated to real world litigation, this means that an overwhelming majority of innocent could potentially be convicted for a crime that they did not commit (this is assuming of course, the fingerprints collected from the crime scene are the prime source of evidence in the trial proceedings). So, although this is probably a micro study when compared to the whole cosmos of the world of forensics, this study in no small part illustrates the fact that even the best trained professionals, especially the forensics experts, are still prone to making errors. In other words, even us human beings are not infallible either. Numerous reasons were cited in this study, and they include:
*The infinite number of reasons for distractions;
*Rushes to jugdement;
*Certain types and kinds of biasness and expectations.
It is also interesting to note that the forensics investigators in this particular study would rather make the errors to free the guilty rather than to prosecute and convict the innocent. So in the end, what does all this mean??? Well, in my ever so famous Equation of Security, errors and mistakes will always happen. Just as good as technology is, it is still makes mistakes.
Even as highly trained forensics investigators are, mistakes will still happen. But as pointed out in the news article, the lesson to be learned here is how the mistakes are acknowledged, addressed, and rectified. Yes, it is a horrible shame and terrible when the wrong people are convicted of a crime, or even apprehended for something they did not do.
So in these cases, it is very important to the Security profession (whether it is Biometrics, or forensics, or even law enforcement) to admit where the mistakes are made, correct them, and apply them to the future. Admitting to mistakes is not an easy thing, but the more we do it, the more human and mature we become in life.
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