Use Of Facial Recognition Technology By Police Comes Under Fire | TODAY
The short version: TODAY's segment on police facial recognition is a reminder that face scans rarely work alone — they're one piece of a bigger automated surveillance stack that includes ALPRs.
Our Take
Credit to TODAY for putting police facial recognition back in the national spotlight. Wrongful arrests, misidentifications, and the lack of clear rules around this tech aren't new problems, but they deserve repeating every time a newsroom with this kind of reach covers it. The more people who understand how these systems actually get used in the field, the harder it becomes for departments to quietly expand them without public input.
What segments like this often leave out is that facial recognition doesn't operate in a vacuum. It's frequently layered on top of license plate reader networks like Flock Safety's, creating a system where your face and your car can both be logged, time-stamped, and cross-referenced — often without a warrant, and often shared across jurisdictions with little oversight. One flawed technology getting scrutiny is good. Remembering that it's usually plugged into a much larger surveillance dragnet is better.
If you want to see how far that dragnet already reaches in your own neighborhood, check out our camera map, and if you're ready to push back locally, our take-action page has concrete steps for getting these cameras — and the policies behind them — in front of your city council.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of TODAY, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.