The Tribune

By JADE RUSSELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

jrussell@tribunemedia.net

HUMAN Rights Bahamas (HRB) said the country’s rising murder rate is no excuse for law enforcement to arbitrarily detain people, warning that the Davis administration’s plan to crack down on crime shouldn’t violate human rights.

HRB’s comments came after National Security Minister Wayne Munroe said on Thursday that the government’s introduction of facial recognition CCTVs for crime detection could involve wrongful identifications that lead to temporary detention of people, an inconvenience he said is the price of having a “free, democratic, and orderly society”.

HRB expressed “extreme concern” over Mr Munroe’s remarks.

“Mr Munroe could not be more wrong,” HRB said. “In fact, his remarks represent the exact opposite of the truth. Freedom of movement in particular, and the right to freedom from undue interference by the authorities generally, is key to a democratic society. You cannot have one without the other.

“Fundamental human rights are never negotiable. They are not an optional convenience to be cast aside when the authorities face difficulties. If the public is forced to give up its most basic rights for any reason, this will no longer be a free society. If civilians are subjected to human rights abuses by the authorities, it can no longer be called a democratic society.

“All around the world, dictatorships and autocratic societies have used public safety as an excuse to erode civil liberties. This is never, ever legitimate and should not be tolerated under any circumstances. The attempt to sacrifice freedom and rights on the altar of security and order is the oldest trick in the tyranny playbook.

“Rather than making life better for people, this approach ends up inflicting further serious harm on the citizenry, which suddenly finds itself under double threat – on the one hand from violent criminals, and on the other from the very State which is supposed to be its protector.”

The group further called on the Davis administration to say it won’t tolerate a rise in arbitrary detentions.

The New York Times reported facial recognition technology flaws in 2019. The National Institute of Standards and Technology reported that year that the systems falsely identified African American and Asian faces ten to 100 times more than Caucasian faces.

Mr Munroe noted during an Office of the Prime Minster press briefing on Thursday that ordinary eyewitness identification can also lead to arresting the wrong person and that judges inform jurors that visual identification can be mistaken.

Mr Munroe described facial recognition technology as a tool that can free the innocent and convict the guilty.