FACIAL RECOGNITION GOT THE WRONG GUY ARRESTED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT

Our Take

Attorney Stephanie's breakdown is a good reminder that facial recognition isn't the slam-dunk evidence cops and prosecutors like to pretend it is. A computer spits out a 'match,' an officer treats it as probable cause, and suddenly someone's sitting in a cell while the actual investigation — the part where humans check alibis, look at timestamps, and ask hard questions — happens after the arrest instead of before it. That's backwards, and it's happening more than departments want to admit.

This matters to us because ALPR networks like Flock Safety operate on the same flawed premise: trust the algorithm first, verify later if someone complains loud enough. A camera flags a plate as 'suspicious,' an officer treats the hit as gospel, and the burden falls on the wrongly stopped driver to prove a negative. We've seen this pattern before with facial recognition, and it's baked into license plate surveillance too — false positives, stale hotlists, and officers who don't double-check before drawing a weapon.

If you want to see how dense this surveillance net already is in your own neighborhood, check our camera map. And if you're ready to push back on unchecked ALPR deployment where you live, our take-action page has concrete steps for public comment periods, city council meetings, and records requests. Credit to Attorney Stephanie for walking through the legal fallout here — it's worth watching part two when it drops.