Chinese cops now have facerecognition glasses
personnel wearing glasses equipped with facial recognition technology have been deployed at a railway station in a central Chinese city to screen large numbers of travellers during the Chinese New Year for wanted criminals.
Using the hi-tech glasses with a camera, railway police personnel at Zhengzhou east railway station in Henan province are matching the identities of passengers with information available on a police database to zero in on criminals.
“The glasses — which resemble Google Glass — are connected to a police database that can match passengers with criminal suspects. Since Zhengzhou railway police started using the eyewear earlier this year, they have identified seven people suspected of crimes ranging from human trafficking to hit-and-run accidents,” said a report in the People’s Daily online. The police personnel also detected 26 cases of identity fraud, reports said.
The new technology requires one facial image for a similarity comparison in the database, he said. In the past, multiple facial pictures from different angles were necessary to achieve the same result. The glasses worn by the police personnel are connected to a tablet computer.
Once the faces of passengers have been scanned, the tablet searches for matches in the police database.