The use of facial recognition technology in policework is becoming more widespread. There are concerns around privacy, racial prejudice and incorrect matches.
It's also absolutely astonishing that even after the police realised he wasn't the perpetrator they didn't just let him go!
"In Mr. Williams’s recollection, after he held the surveillance video still next to his face, the two detectives leaned back in their chairs and looked at one another. One detective, seeming chagrined, said to his partner: “I guess the computer got it wrong.”
They turned over a third piece of paper, which was another photo of the man from the Shinola store next to Mr. Williams’s driver’s license. Mr. Williams again pointed out that they were not the same person.
Mr. Williams asked if he was free to go. “Unfortunately not,” one detective said.
Mr. Williams was kept in custody until that evening, 30 hours after being arrested, and released on a $1,000 personal bond. He waited outside in the rain for 30 minutes until his wife could pick him up. When he got home at 10 p.m., his five-year-old daughter was still awake. She said she was waiting for him because he had said, while being arrested, that he’d be right back."