NEW YORK, N.Y. — According to an ACLU report published April 14, 2026, Kimberlee Williams, an Oklahoma resident, was wrongly jailed after Maryland police relied on faulty facial recognition software that falsely identified her as the perpetrator of a bank robbery in a state she had never visited.
According to the report, in June 2021, police in three Maryland counties “accused Ms. Williams of being a match to an unknown individual who had entered several bank branches in Maryland, impersonated account holders, and withdrawn thousands of dollars from their accounts.”
The banks investigating the incident sent a picture of the unknown suspect to “a national listserv of police and private investigators called Crimedex. Someone on the listserv ran the image through facial recognition technology and sent back Ms. Williams’ name and photo as a purported match to the suspect.”
According to the report, without any further research or oversight, county police obtained a warrant for Ms. Williams’ arrest. Further illustrating the lack of diligence, the detective applying for the arrest warrant falsely claimed that Ms. Williams had been identified as the suspect “and that the detective had confirmed the identification by visually comparing a photo of the suspect with an older photo of Ms. Williams. Because the facial recognition search had found an innocent person (Ms. Williams) who looked similar to the suspect—an inherent problem with the technology—the officers claimed verification was worthless.”
According to the report, after Ms. Williams’ arrest, she was jailed in Montgomery County for six months and was only released in December 2021 when charges from two other counties were also dropped.
According to the report, Kimberlee Williams is not the only person who has been falsely accused and jailed because of faulty facial recognition software.
“We now know of 14 people across the country who have been wrongfully arrested because of police reliance on dangerous face recognition technology, with no telling how many more have faced the same injustice,” said Lauren Yu, a legal fellow with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.
A significant concern highlighted in the report is that errors are more likely because of inherent bias in such software. The ACLU report noted that “facial recognition systems exhibit higher rates of false matches when used on people of color, women, older people, and young people.”
Essentially, the technology appears to be biased against certain marginalized groups.
After her incarceration, Ms. Williams is being represented by the ACLU and seeking redress. According to the report, the ACLU recently sent letters to Montgomery County and two other Maryland police departments on behalf of Kimberlee Williams, demanding an apology for the six months she spent behind bars, separated from her family, as well as an investigation into the failures that led to her arrest.
According to the report, Ms. Williams is also seeking policy changes to prevent such an incident from occurring again. David Rocah, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Maryland, noted the policy failure that led to her incarceration:
“The investigative failures that led to Ms. Williams’ improper arrest are a predictable result of the State’s unwillingness to specify what further investigation should be required following a facial recognition match. We told the General Assembly additional guidance was necessary when they passed legislation governing this technology in 2024, and we told the Maryland State Police this was necessary when they were writing model policies for police departments to use.”
Specifically, Ms. Williams is seeking reforms that must “include prohibiting police from relying on facial recognition technology searches conducted by outside entities, as well as banning police from making arrests based only on face recognition results followed by human identifications, which are tainted when face recognition technology makes a false match to an innocent person who looks similar to the suspect.”
The report does not specify any response from police.
“No one should spend six months in jail because an algorithm got it wrong,” Yu said. “These Maryland police departments owe it to Ms. Williams to make amends and to take serious steps to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else. And police across the country are on notice: face recognition technology is hurting people, and these abuses must end.”
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