Facial recognition

The term facial recognition is used for software that compares faces, and pairs images that might be of the same person.

In recent decades this software has, controversially, been used by law enforcement officials.

Controversy over the source of images

Privacy advocates questioned whether those building the database the software uses have the intellectual property rights to use images acquired from other government agencies, from commercial enterprises, or from social media. These images were normally taken with the explicit or tacit permission of the individuals, who had not granted permission for their images to be aggregated into facial recognition databases.

Privacy advocates also questioned when law enforcement had authorization of surviellance video.

The danger of false positives

While facial recognition can find real startling matches, it is unable to determine when it has made a mistake. And yet there are notorious cases where individuals have spent months in jail over a match that any human who paid attention would have recognized was unreliable. In late 2025 Fargo, North Dakota police officials relied on facial recognition software to have Angela Lipps arrested, and held, for over five months, over a facial recognition match, without even interviewing her.