Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Florida Man Sues Police Over Alleged Wrongful Arrest For AI Facial Recognition Error

Wikimedia Commons/Public/Jernej Furman from Slovenia, CC BY 2.0

Florida man Robert Dillon filed a lawsuit against police for what he believes is a wrongful arrest from an artificial intelligence facial recognition error.

In 2023, Dillon — whose first name has also been reported as Richard — was arrested for allegedly trying to “lure a child” away from a McDonald’s in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, which is hundreds of miles from his home. He has since been cleared but will be a plaintiff in a new American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit against law enforcement, CBS reported.

Dillon is suing for monetary damages and seeking policy changes to be instituted immediately.

“I’m hoping that the outcome of this is to prevent other people from going through the trauma that I went through,” Dillon said in an interview with CBS.

The police relied on facial recognition technology to get the arrest warrant, according to a Wednesday press release from the ACLU. Dillon is suing the Jacksonville Beach Police Department, Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office.

The Jacksonville Beach Police Department algorithm said it had a 93% probability that Dillon was the man caught on security cameras, according to The Guardian.

The Jacksonville Beach Police Department and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office were unable to provide comment to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“No one should lose their freedom or be scared to leave their house because an algorithm got it wrong,” Nate Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology project, said via the press release.

When Dillon was arrested at his home he pleaded with officers saying they had the wrong suspect. He has maintained that that one officer told him, “If what you’re telling me is true, you got one hell of a lawsuit,” according to CBS.

Dillon alleged in the lawsuit that the images used to identity him were “partially shadowed and off-axis,” the outlet reported.

In 2019, San Francisco banned facial recognition technology after civil liberty groups were worried that it would lead to overly oppressive surveillance in the United States.

Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office operates the facial recognition technology system in Florida, according to the ACLU’s press release.

“Florida’s growing reliance on facial recognition technology threatens us all. We must stop this dangerous pattern before it traps more innocent people. No one should have their freedom taken away because the police rely on faulty technology,” Nicholas Warren, staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida, said in the press release.