In the dystopian nightmare scenario imagined by opponents of facial recognition technology, an innocent person sitting at home might find themselves erroneously flagged by facial matching, and instantly turned into a criminal in the eyes of the law. Probable cause standards and police procedural policies are supposed to prevent this kind of error, but this is exactly what appears to have happened to Angela Lipps.
Lipps, a 50-year-old grandmother, has never visited states that are not adjacent to her home in Tennessee. Regardless, Lipps was forced to spend six months in prison, after U.S. Marshals showed up at her house with guns, claiming she was the mastermind of an organized bank fraud operation – in Fargo, North Dakota.
“I’ve never been to North Dakota, I don’t know anyone from North Dakota,” says Lipps in an article from Inforum.
Facial recognition technology flagged Lipps based on a surveillance video of a woman using a fake military ID to withdraw large sums of money. The officer in charge of the case appears to have approved an arrest based solely on the facial match and basic comparisons with Lipps’ social media accounts and driver’s license photo.
The case mirrors other cases of police treating facial recognition results as probable cause, despite established law and policy providing no basis for doing so with technology that has been judged comparable to an anonymous informant. Fargo Police signed an affidavit of probable cause based on the biometric match, follow-up coverage from Inforum says.
Held in a Tennessee prison for four months as a fugitive from justice from North Dakota, Lipps was eventually told she’d have to travel to North Dakota (for the first time) to fight charges of four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information and four counts of theft.
Her lawyer eventually asked Lipps for her bank records, which showed her purchasing cigarettes in Tennessee at the time the bank fraud was taking place in Fargo. “If the only thing you have is facial recognition, I might want to dig a little deeper,” says Jay Greenwood, Lipps’ lawyer in North Dakota.
Lipps was finally released from Cass County Jail on Christmas Eve, having spent four months in prison – among the longest wrongful detentions based on FRT on record. Stranded in Fargo with no money to get home, she arrived home to unpaid bills that eventually led to the loss of her house, her car and her dog.
‘I’ll never go back to North Dakota’
The nightmare scenario has, understandably, prompted fresh questions about the use of facial recognition technology by police, and the process by which a match leads to an arrest.
North Dakota does not have legislation regarding the use of AI during police investigations. And the regulatory wild west means all kinds of tech products are being tested, with minimal transparency.
Cody Schuler of the ACLU of North Dakota says “we don’t see proper regulation by our Legislature, by the federal government, so there are a lot of questions. We’ve really gotten ahead of the game, and we need to really slow down and have serious conversations in our communities and with our lawmakers about how, and if at all, this technology should be in place.”
Police don’t ‘have’ facial recognition, they just use it: chief
The response from police in North Dakota is doing little to quell concerns that more cases like this will arise.
Fargo Police Chief David Zibolski has alluded to “gaps in the reporting,” claiming that the Fargo Police Department does not “possess” facial recognition, but that it can draw on federal facial recognition systems to assist in cases. He says the Lipps case is still ongoing, so he can’t discuss it in depth. He notes that Fargo investigators forwarded their case to the State’s Attorney’s Office, where prosecutors determined investigators had enough probable cause to file charges. He says a police officer offered Lipps money for a hotel, and tried to get her a ride home. And he notes that the jail has winter clothes for released inmates, and says Lipps could have just asked for a coat.
“While we diligently try to be as thorough as possible and, in no way, want to see anyone arrested or held unnecessarily, the system isn’t perfect,” the chief says. Offered a chance to provide further details via an interview with WDAY News, which broke the Lipps story, Zibolski declined. However, he has confirmed that Lipps isn’t entirely off the hook yet. The case was dismissed without prejudice – meaning the charges could be brought again, if more evidence comes to light.
“We’re going to continue through with the investigation,” he says. “Again, hopefully we can definitively ascertain who’s involved and who’s not involved.”
The dismissal “merely means that there is insufficient probable cause at this time to continue holding this individual on charges,” according to Fargo Mayor Tim Mohoney.
Oops, we did it again: misidentified, some innocent men
The precedent Zibolski sets is that, if biometric facial matching tech leads to someone being arrested at gunpoint for committing a crime in another state, resulting in them spending four months in jail, it’s considered to be a regrettable but inevitable error. Mistakes happen, say the police; sorry we destroyed your life without a good reason. (By the way, we might arrest you again if we can find enough to make it stick.)
It is a textbook case for those arguing that facial recognition, used incorrectly, can lead to false arrests and abuse of power.
Civil rights groups will take note. Lawyers have already, and are considering a civil suit against the city of Fargo. Dane DeKrey, who represents Lipps, says “we believe this is the longest AI-related wrongful detention case in U.S. history. We are exploring state and federal claims, so the case – if brought – will be in federal court.”
Reporting on Angela Lipps’ case does not mention a biometrics provider attached to the Fargo police force. However, in December 2025, Fargo voted to commit to a 10-year, $13.4 million contract with Axon Enterprise, the law enforcement tech firm formerly called Taser International that was testing its FRT in the Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta.
News reports from 2021 also have the West Fargo Police – who were also involved in the Lipps case – testing out Clearview AI’s controversial FRT product. That said, Clearview requires agencies to acknowledge its results “are indicative and not definitive” and that officers must conduct further research before acting on them.
Article Topics
biometric matching | biometrics | criminal ID | facial recognition | false arrest | North Dakota | United States