WA police end five-month facial recognition trial after 122 arrests
Overview
Western Australia Police say their five-month real-time facial recognition trial, which concluded on a Saturday, scanned 1,380,882 faces across 100 deployments in 43 regional and metropolitan locations.
The alerts led to 122 arrests, 146 engagements with registered sex offenders, and 10 welfare checks. Police report nine incorrect alerts and an error rate of 0.00065%. Civil liberties advocate Bill Rowlings says that error rate should be measured against convictions from the arrests.
The surveillance vans have been removed from public deployment while the force conducts an internal evaluation of how the technology performed and its community impacts, including whether all safeguards and requirements were met.
Written by AI from the articles below · updated Nov 2, 1:54 AM ET
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- The Guardian · AINewsWA police facial recognition trial scans 1.38 million faces, leads to 122 arrests
AIWestern Australia Police say a five-month real-time facial recognition trial scanned 1,380,882 faces across 100 deployments and produced 122 arrests and nine incorrect alerts. Police put the error rate at 0.00065%, but civil liberties advocate Bill Rowlings says that figure should be measured against convictions from the arrests. The surveillance vans have been removed from public use while police evaluate the trial.
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