In a first for Australian law enforcement, police in Western Australia have deployed live facial recognition technology in marked vans at locations around Perth.
The system scans the faces of passersby and compares them in real time with a watchlist of around 4,000 people with outstanding warrants. The list also includes registered sex offenders and missing persons. When a potential match occurs, nearby officers are alerted.
Police say the trial of the technology is "a way that we can increase the freedoms and the privacy of our community." But facial recognition technology has documented drawbacks and risks, and deploying it in this way will present new ones—and Australia's legal and governance systems are ill-prepared to manage them.
The case for the WA police program
WA police commissioner Col Blanch states the trial "is not about mass surveillance."
