A Florida man has filed a lawsuit against multiple U.S. law enforcement agencies, claiming he was wrongfully arrested and falsely accused of luring a child after malfunctioning facial recognition technology misidentified him. When the 52-year-old man was arrested in August 2024 at his home in front of his wife and daughter, in San Carlos Park, Fla., outside of Fort Myers, he was informed he had been caught on McDonald’s security cameras in Jacksonville Beach allegedly attempting to lure a girl under the age of 12 into his company, according to the lawsuit. The man, who resides some 300 miles from Jacksonville Beach, where the alleged crime occurred, had never set foot in the area, the legal filing states. The case was dismissed last year, and his charges were dropped in connection with the alleged incident in November 2023, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which filed the case on his behalf, though residual “trauma” remains, it says. Get breaking National news The lawsuit, which has been brought against the Jacksonville Beach Police Department, the Jacksonville sheriff’s office, and Bob Gualtieri, the sheriff of Pinellas County, accuses investigators of arresting the man using “an incorrect result from facial recognition” and “concealing evidence that showed he could not have committed the crime.” The lawsuit describes a flawed photo lineup presented to a witness, in which they incorrectly identified an innocent man as the suspect due to “automated bias.” Facial recognition technology is designed to find the closest-looking face in a database. However, if the suspect is not in the database, the system can still return an innocent person who resembles them, the lawsuit explains. The candidate is then placed among several filler images selected to resemble the perpetrator, a standard practice to ensure the suspect does not stand out. But