Facial Recognition Failure

Our Take

CBS News Sacramento's segment lays out something we've been saying for a while: facial recognition doesn't just make mistakes, it makes mistakes with real consequences. When the tool falsely flags two dozen sitting lawmakers as criminal suspects, that's not a rounding error — it's a preview of what happens to ordinary people who don't have the platform or resources to fight back when the algorithm gets it wrong.

Flock Safety and its ALPR network don't run facial recognition in the traditional sense, but the underlying problem is identical. These systems are marketed as neutral, precise, and objective, yet they're built on pattern-matching technology that misfires constantly — and when it does, the burden falls on innocent people to prove they weren't the car, the plate, or the face the system flagged. Lawmakers getting misidentified makes headlines. A regular driver getting pulled over at gunpoint because a camera read a plate wrong usually doesn't.

This is exactly why transparency and pushback matter before these tools become even more embedded in daily policing. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your community, and head to our take-action page if you want to do something about it. Credit to CBS News Sacramento for putting numbers behind what critics have been warning about for years.