Police use facial recognition to scan one million faces in WA trial leading to 122 arrests
Summary
Western Australia police scanned 1,380,882 faces during a five-month real-time facial recognition trial, reporting 122 arrests, nine incorrect alerts, 146 interactions with registered sex offenders and 10 people located for welfare checks. Civil liberties advocates challenged the way police described the error rate and questioned the basis for scanning people in public. The surveillance vans have been withdrawn while authorities evaluate the trial.Key Facts
- Police conducted 100 deployments at 43 locations across metropolitan and regional Western Australia.
- At the Perth Royal Show, three operations scanned 223,749 faces and led to 15 alerts, three arrests and seven interactions with registered sex offenders.
- Police said the nine incorrect alerts represented an error rate of 0.00065% of all scans, and said no one was arrested because of those alerts.
- Police Commissioner Col Blanch said officers spoke with each person who received an incorrect alert.
- Civil Liberties Australia chief executive Bill Rowlings argued that the error rate should be assessed by checking how many arrests result in convictions.
- Western Australia’s independent privacy watchdog said it was not involved in implementing the trial and warned of collective privacy harms.
- Police said images of people who were not on the alert list were pixelated in real time and deleted immediately.
- The trial’s surveillance vans have been removed from public deployment while the trial is evaluated.
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