Currently, promising new tools are under development that will enable crime scene investigators to analyze fingerprints or DNA-traces at the crime scene. While these technologies could help to find a perpetrator early in the investigation, they may also strengthen confirmation bias when an incorrect scenario directs the investigation this early. In this study, 40 experienced Crime scene investigators (CSIs) investigated a mock crime scene to study the influence of rapid identification technologies on the investigation. This initial study shows that receiving identification information during the investigation results in more accurate scenarios. CSIs in general are not as much reconstructing the event that took place, but rather have a “who done it routine.” Their focus is on finding perpetrator traces with the risk of missing important information at the start of the investigation. Furthermore, identification information was mostly integrated in their final scenarios when the results of the analysis matched their expectations. CSIs have the tendency to look for confirmation, but the technology has no influence on this tendency. CSIs should be made aware of the risks of this strategy as important offender information could be missed or innocent people could be wrongfully accused.
Over the past few years a growing number of artists have critiqued the ubiquity of identity recognition technologies. Specifically, the use of these technologies by state security programs, tech-giants and multinational corporations has met with opposition and controversy. A popular form of resistance to recognition technology is sought in strategies of masking and camouflage. Zach Blas, Leo Selvaggio, Sterling Crispin and Adam Harvey are among a group of internationally acclaimed artists who have developed subversive anti-facial recognition masks that disrupt identification technologies. This paper examines the ontological underpinnings of these popular and widely exhibited mask projects. Over and against a binary understanding and criticism of identity recognition technology, I propose to take a relational turn to reimagine these technologies not as an object for our eyes, but as a relationship between living organisms and things. A relational perspective cuts through dualist and anthropocentric conceptions of recognition technology opening pathways to intersectional forms of resistance and critique. Moreover, if human-machine relationships are to be understood as coming into being in mutual dependency, if the boundaries between online and offline are always already blurred, if the human and the machine live intertwined lives and it is no longer clear where the one stops and the other starts, we need to revise our understanding of the self. A relational understanding of recognition technology moves away from a notion of the self as an isolated and demarcated entity in favour of an understanding of the self as relationally connected, embedded and interdependent. This could alter the way we relate to machines and multiplies the lines of flight we can take out of a culture of calculated settings.
Crime scenes can always be explained in multiple ways. Traces alone do not provide enough information to infer a whole series of events that has taken place; they only provide clues for these inferences. CSIs need additional information to be able to interpret observed traces. In the near future, a new source of information that could help to interpret a crime scene and testing hypotheses will become available with the advent of rapid identification techniques. A previous study with CSIs demonstrated that this information had an influence on the interpretation of the crime scene, yet it is still unknown what exact information was used for this interpretation and for the construction of their scenario. The present study builds on this study and gains more insight into (1) the exact investigative and forensic information that was used by CSIs to construct their scenario, (2) the inferences drawn from this information, and (3) the kind of evidence that was selected at the crime scene to (dis)prove this scenario. We asked 48 CSIs to investigate a potential murder crime scene on the computer and explicate what information they used to construct a scenario and to select traces for analysis. The results show that the introduction of rapid ID information at the start of an investigation contributes to the recognition of different clues at the crime scene, but also to different interpretations of identical information, depending on the kind of information available and the scenario one has in mind. Furthermore, not all relevant traces were recognized, showing that important information can be missed during the investigation. In this study, accurate crime scenarios where mainly build with forensic information, but we should be aware of the fact that crime scenes are always contaminated with unrelated traces and thus be cautious of the power of rapid ID at the crime scene.
