Call to end police use of facial recognition technology

FACIAL recognition software should be dropped by police amid concerns it is “almost entirely inaccurate”, campaigners have warned.

As we reported last week, figures revealed in response to Freedom of Information requests by Big Brother Watch have shown that, for South Wales Police, 91% of “matches” found by the technology were wrong.

For the Metropolitan Police, the figure was 98%.

The software has been used at major events like last year’s Uefa Champions League final in Cardiff to detect people on a watch list, including wanted criminals.

Director of Big Brother Watch Silkie Carlo said: “It is deeply disturbing and undemocratic that police are using a technology that is almost entirely inaccurate, that they have no legal power for, and that poses a major risk to our freedoms.”

Figures released by South Wales Police showed 2,451 out of 2,685 matches were found to be incorrect – the equivalent of 91%. Of the remaining 234, there were 110 interventions and 15 arrests.

A South Wales Police spokesman admitted “no facial recognition system is 100% accurate under all conditions” but added that in the months since it was first deployed “no-one has been arrested where a ‘false positive alert’ has occurred and no members of the public have complained”.

The force blamed the high number of false positives at the Champions League final on the “poor quality of images” on the watch list supplied by partner agencies, as well as the fact it was the first major use of the technology.