Facial Recognition Put an Innocent Grandmother in Jail #CompanyWatch #Surveillance

Our Take

Credit to Mading Thok for digging into a pattern that keeps repeating: a facial recognition system spits out a 'possible match,' a cop treats it as a name, and an innocent person sits in a cell for months. The company's defense is always the same — the tool only returns candidates, humans make the identification. That's technically true and completely beside the point. Once a machine hands an officer a face and a name, the investigation functionally ends there. Nobody goes looking for the real culprit when the computer already gave them one.

This matters to us because it's the exact same rhetorical shield Flock Safety uses for its ALPR network. 'We just provide leads, we don't make arrests' sounds responsible until you watch what actually happens at the human step: a hit on a hot list, a stolen plate flag, a 'similar vehicle' match, and suddenly someone's getting pulled over at gunpoint over a database error. The technology changes — faces versus plates — but the liability dodge is identical, and so is the damage to the person standing in the middle of it.

Eight documented wrongful arrests in 2026 tied to one company's facial recognition isn't a rounding error, it's a business model running on other people's due process. If a camera network like this is operating in your area, go look at our map to see what's already watching you, and check take-action for ways to push back before you're the next 'possible match.'