Police Use Photo Of Woody Harrelson To Catch Alleged Beer Thief

Published May 21, 2019 at 6:55 AM EDT

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. New York police had a problem with facial recognition software. Security camera images of a beer thief were too blurry to identify, so police replaced the blurry face with an image of the actor Woody Harrelson. The software found a match. Police made an arrest. Georgetown University's Center on Privacy and Technology called out this episode. Police insist facial recognition is just a tool. Nobody is arrested solely for resembling Woody Harrelson. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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