Big Brother isn't coming to America.
He's already here and setting up shop in major cities.
And Dallas Police just crossed one line that should terrify every American.
Dallas moves to expand facial recognition to minor crimes
Dallas Police wanted to use facial recognition technology to track down people accused of trespassing and stealing packages off porches.
The department partnered with Clearview AI in mid-2024 and has already used the system 156 times, leading to 25 arrests.
Now they want to expand it far beyond violent crimes into everyday offenses.
Clearview AI scrapes billions of photos from public websites and social media to create a searchable database of faces.
Every photo you've ever posted online, every image a friend tagged you in, every picture from a public event — all of it gets fed into a system designed to identify you on demand.
You didn't consent. Nobody asked. They just took it.
Dallas approved facial recognition last spring after then-Police Chief Eddie Garcia promised the technology would "revolutionize" investigations.
The city added restrictions requiring approval before searches and review by FBI-trained specialists.
But those safeguards mean nothing if the department decides minor crimes justify scanning billions of faces.
Council member Cara Mendelsohn praised the efficiency when the program launched.
"This feels very comfortable for me. This feels like efficiency and just the next step," Mendelsohn said.¹
That's exactly the problem — treating mass surveillance as just another "next step" in modern policing.
Clearview's troubled track record exposes the scam
Clearview AI settled a massive privacy lawsuit earlier this year that could cost the company up to $50 million.
Multiple states sued over the company's practice of scraping billions of photos from the internet without permission.²
The company that Dallas Police now want to use for package theft investigations just paid out $50 million for violating Americans' privacy rights.
Let that sink in.
Dallas officials insist their system only gets used for violent crimes or emergencies.
The department says four requests have already been denied for failing to meet severity thresholds.
But the new proposal would blow past those restrictions and open up facial recognition for minor offenses.
Police described Clearview as "vital" to their operations during a presentation to the Community Police Oversight Board.
Translation: We got a taste of this power and now we want more.
This is how freedom dies in America
Dallas Police promised to use facial recognition only for violent crimes and emergencies.
That lasted less than a year before they decided package theft was serious enough to scan billions of American faces.
The restrictions meant nothing. The safeguards were window dressing. The oversight was a joke.
This is the playbook for every surveillance expansion in history. Start with something everyone agrees on — tracking down murderers and rapists. Get the technology in place. Build the database.
Then quietly expand it to "minor" crimes until every American is in the system.
Multiple North Texas departments already use similar systems. Cities across the country are adopting these tools with the same promises about "strict limits" that get abandoned the moment it's convenient.
The technology can't distinguish between criminals and law-abiding citizens until after the search happens.
Everyone becomes a suspect in a digital lineup whether they've done anything wrong or not.
Your face gets run through the system because you happened to walk past a crime scene. Or because you look similar to someone who committed trespassing. Or because an algorithm flagged you based on photos from ten years ago.
Once the infrastructure exists for mass facial recognition, there's no limit to how it gets used.
Today it's package theft. Tomorrow it's attending the "wrong" political rally or church service.
China already does exactly this. The Chinese Communist Party uses facial recognition to track citizens' every move, flag political dissidents, and enforce social control.
That system didn't start with total surveillance either. It started with promises about fighting crime and protecting public safety.
Dallas officials want you to trust that American police will use this power more responsibly than the Chinese government does.
But they're already breaking their own rules less than a year after the program started.
The Founders who wrote the Fourth Amendment understood something Dallas Police apparently forgot — the power to identify and track citizens without warrant or probable cause is the power to destroy liberty itself.
Benjamin Franklin said it best: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Dallas Police are asking residents to trade constitutional protections against unreasonable searches for the convenience of catching package thieves faster.
That's not a trade any American should accept.
¹ Ken Macon, "Dallas Police Propose Expanding AI Facial Recognition to Minor Crimes," Reclaim The Net, December 23, 2025.
² Ibid.
