The ACLU is suing two Florida police departments over the arrest of a Fort Myers man in a child-abduction case, saying officers treated a flawed face-recognition match as a near-certain ID.
match that was inaccurate, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, even though he lived more than 300 miles from the scene and says he had never set foot in the city where the crime took place.
Robert Dillon, a 52-year-old commercial crabber from Fort Myers, was arrested after FACES—a face-recognition system operated by Florida’s Pinellas County Sheriff's Office—matched his face against a photo of a man on a computer screen taken with a cell phone. The system returned a “93 percent match on facial features,” according to police-investigatory notes. The scores it emits represent how much two images look alike to the algorithm. Not how likely it is that they show the same person.
FACES holds tens of millions of Florida mug shots and driver's license photos and is one of the longest-running police face-recognition databases in the United States. The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the suit, says Dillon was arrested at his home in front of his wife, held overnight in a cold cell, and transported in a caged, unlit van. He pledged the title to his truck to make bond.
The arrest came during peak stone crab season, causing him to fall behind on rent and nearly lose his home. His mugshot stayed online for nearly a year, removed from the county website only after a TV reporter intervened. Strangers approach Dillon in public to ask about the case, the complaint says, and he no longer feels comfortable talking to children.
The incident took place shortly before midnight on November 2, 2023, at a McDonald's in Jacksonville Beach, where a man allegedly approached a girl under 12 and repeatedly asked her to leave with him. She refused. After he approached her a second time, she called for her mother. The man left before the police arrived.
The complaint lays out several facts that pointed away from Dillon and never reached the judge who signed the warrant for his arrest. A manager at the McDonald's told investigators the suspect was a “regular customer” she had seen there multiple times. According to the complaint, Dillon had never visited Jacksonville Beach, living hundreds of miles away.
A Jacksonville Beach police officer assigned to the case sent an attempt-to-identify bulletin to surrounding agencies later that November using cell phone photos of the McDonald’s surveillance footage. A sergeant with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office ran the images through FACES and sent back the “93 percent match” to Dillon's name. The investigating officer then requested a search of license plate readers for two vehicles registered to Dillon, covering the days around the incident.
Neither turned up anywhere in the county, according to the complaint, which says the results were omitted from the warrant application. Six months passed with no further investigation, the complaint says. In July 2024, the officer submitted the warrant. A judge signed it, and Dillon was arrested the following month.
He retained a criminal defense attorney and, that October, pleaded not guilty. The State Attorney's Office dropped all charges a few weeks later. The investigating officer was nevertheless promoted by the end of the year.
“I will never get over how terrified and worried I was, wondering if I’d ever go home to my wife and daughter again,” Dillon says in a statement shared by his attorneys. “Over a year later, I'm still picking up the pieces of my life, all because the police relied on this dangerous technology instead of doing their jobs and actually investigating.
” The suit names the investigating officer and the JSO sergeant individually, and also targets the City of Jacksonville Beach, the Jacksonville Sheriff, and the Pinellas County Sheriff in their official capacities. It seeks compensatory and punitive damages, and asks a court to order all three agencies to overhaul their face-recognition policies.
“Due to pending litigation, we would be unable to comment further on the incident,” a Jacksonville Sheriff's Office spokesperson tells WIRED in a statement. The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Jacksonville Sheriff T.K.
Waters told local news station Action News Jax after the case was dropped that a face-recognition hit alone would not constitute probable cause in his office: “If you came to me with a facial-recognition hit and that was your probable cause, I would probably kick you out of my office,” he said. FACES has been operated by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office since 2001, making it one of the oldest police face-recognition systems in the country.
At its peak in 2021, its tens of millions of Florida mug shots and driver's license photos were accessible to. To use the system, investigators upload an image of a suspect, the system compares it against the gallery, and it returns a ranked list of possible matches. The system has long operated with little oversight. A 2016 study by Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology found that Pinellas County Sheriff's Officeand required no reasonable suspicion to run a query.
Asked whether the office audited searches for misuse, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri replied, “No, not really. ” Florida agencies have also ACLU says Dillon's case is one of at least 15 known wrongful arrests in the United States attributed to face-recognition technology. Earlier this year, the same Jacksonville Sheriff's Officein an auto-theft investigation. According to Action News Jax, he spent nearly three months in jail after an 85 percent match led to his arrest.
By the time the charges were dropped, he had lost his home, his job, and custody of his two kids.
“No one should lose their freedom or be scared to leave their house because an algorithm got it wrong,” says Nate Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, who called on Florida police departments to make amends and adopt safeguards to prevent future wrongful arrests. “Police across the country are on notice,” adds Wessler. “Unreliable face-recognition technology is hurting people, and we will keep fighting to hold them accountable for these abuses.
”is an investigative reporter from Texas covering privacy and national security. He's the recipient of multiple Society of Professional Journalists awards and is co-recipient of an Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting. Previously, he was a senior reporter at Gizmodo and a staff writer for the Daily ... So far this year, authorities have seized or demanded ballots from elections in four states.
Experts fear the trend could throw the midterms into chaos unless courts draw a line. One line tucked into a federal highway bill would strip funds from cities and states unless they kill their automated plate tracking programs—effectively banning the tech for all but toll collection. David Norman, a former Phoenix police officer who’s described himself as “a fucking savage,” now runs a company that provided training to Homeland Security’s Special Response Teams.
A federal IT staffer filed a complaint about DOGE, then went public. Shortly after Elon Musk boosted a post calling his claims false, his brake lines were cut. Now he’s suing for defamation. Plus: Google publishes a live exploit for an unpatched flaw, the feds arrest two men accused of creating thousands of nonconsensual deepfake nudes, and more.
Plus: A ransomware group is now stealing data in person, BusPatrol wants to hand its license plate surveillance data to the cops, and more. The website, which compares human beings to extraterrestrials, touts arrest numbers from the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown. But some of its details are really out there. Four people suing Elon Musk's AI firm under pseudonyms due to the risks of being identified may face a difficult choice: Reveal your real names, or drop the lawsuit.
Most US World Cup stadiums are surrounded by surveillance cameras. Want to know if you’re being watched on your way to a match? These maps will help you. Earlier this year, the “Because I Got High” rapper went viral for winning a case against the cops.
Now he’s crypto’s free-speech hero, even though he isn’t quite sure how the digital currency works. A Conspiracy Theory About QR Codes Has Led to Chaos Ahead of Georgia's Midterms The state of Georgia banned the use of QR codes for elections, based in part on the assertions of a man who’s boosted false claims about Israel and 9/11. Now no one knows how ballots will be counted.
Please follow us on Google to support us Surveillance Face Recognition Police Crime Algorithms Machine Learning
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Karen Read Case Exposes Alleged Racist, Sexist Texts and Institutional Failures in Massachusetts Police DepartmentsThe murder trial of Karen Read has revealed extensive text messages between two Massachusetts police officers containing racist, sexist, and violent content. The messages have become central to Read's lawsuit against state and local police departments, alleging systemic bias and institutional rot. The scandal has led to the firing of one officer and the resignation of another, while raising broader concerns about accountability in law enforcement.
Read more »
Former Washington Police Officers Sue US Over Wrongful ConvictionsTwo former Washington Metropolitan Officers Department officers, Terence Sutton and Andrew Zabavsky, haVe filed a lawsuit against the United States in federal court in Washington, D.C. The officers are seeking damages for malicious prosecution, false arrest, and false imprisonment.
Read more »
Family of e-bike rider killed during Escondido police pursuit files wrongful death suitThe lawsuit alleges police Officer Jason Ingco deliberately accelerated and intentionally struck Jacob Illian’s e-bike from behind during the pursuit.
Read more »
Family of California e-bike rider killed during police pursuit files wrongful death suitThe lawsuit alleges police Officer Jason Ingco deliberately accelerated and intentionally struck Jacob Illian’s e-bike from behind during the pursuit.
Read more »