How the NYPD uses facial recognition technology to identify suspects

Our Take

Credit to PIX11 News for getting cameras inside NYPD's facial recognition unit, but a segment built around a successful jewelry heist ID is exactly the kind of framing police departments love: technology as clean, effective, and beyond question. What's missing is any mention of the false-match cases that have already put innocent people in handcuffs in cities like Detroit and New Orleans, or the fact that NYPD has spent years fighting to keep its facial recognition policies and audit data out of public view.

Facial recognition and automated license plate readers are two arms of the same surveillance body — one tracks your face, the other tracks your car, and increasingly they're fed into the same databases and shared across agencies with little public input. When a local news segment presents this tech as an unambiguous crime-solving win, it skips the part where a mismatched algorithm can turn a bystander into a suspect with almost no recourse.

If you want to see how this surveillance infrastructure is actually built out block by block, check our camera map to find ALPR deployments near you, and visit take action for ways to push back on unchecked surveillance in your own city.