Boogaloo Bias

Abstract

Boogaloo Bias is an interactive artwork and research project that addresses some of the known problems with the unregulated use of facial recognition technologies, including the practice of ‘brute forcing’ where, in the absence of high-quality images of a suspect, law enforcement agents have been known to substitute images of celebrities the suspect is reported to resemble. To lam- poon this approach, the Boogaloo Bias facial recognition algorithm searches for members of the anti-law enforcement militia, the Boogaloo Bois, using a fa- cial recognition algorithm trained on faces of characters from the 1984 movie Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. The film is the namesake for the Boogaloo Bois, an anti-law enforcement militia that emerged from 4chan meme culture. They have been present at both right and left-wing protests in the US since Janu- ary 2020. The system is used to search live video feeds, protest footage, and images that are uploaded to the Boogaloo Bias website. All matches made by the system are false positives. No information from the live feeds or website uploads is saved or shared.