Imagine a store camera catches a blurry picture of a stranger, and a computer says, "this looks a little like someone we found online." That's a tip, like a friend saying "I think I saw your bike over there." You would go and check before you called anyone a thief. In Fargo, nobody checked. The tip became a warrant, the warrant became marshals with guns at a grandmother's door, and six months of her life were gone. The computer made a guess. The people treated it like a fact.
Here's why that's a big deal: police all over the country use facial recognition, and almost all of them promise the same thing, that a match is only a lead. This case shows what that promise is worth when nobody has to prove it was kept. The fix is not a smarter camera. It is a rule that a person has to find real evidence before anyone is arrested, and a city that pays when that rule gets skipped.