Facial recognition is for-profit policing

The only thing standing between you and a jail cell is your ability to prove that you are not the person in a grainy video taken five months or a year ago

Facial recognition.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock)

On a Thursday evening five months ago, one day before his 42nd birthday, Robert Julian-Borchak Williams was arrested in front of his wife and children at his home in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Asked what crime he was accused of committing, police refused to say. In response to questions about where her husband was being taken, one officer told Williams's wife that she ought to "Google it."

According to The New York Times, Williams was then brought to a police detention center. His mugshot was taken, as were samples of his fingerprints and DNA. He spent the night in jail. It was not until the middle of the next day that he would learn why he was there: because of a computer.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.