Western Australian police concluded a five‑month trial of real‑time facial recognition technology on Saturday, after scanning 1,380,882 faces during 100 deployments of surveillance vans across 43 regional and metropolitan locations.
The trial, which ran from early February to early July, resulted in 122 arrests after the system flagged individuals whose live images matched faces in police databases.
During the same period the technology produced nine incorrect alerts, prompting officers to engage with a total of 146 registered sex offenders as part of the verification process.
Police officials said the deployments involved mobile vans equipped with cameras that captured live video feeds, which were then compared instantly against existing law‑enforcement databases.
While the trial demonstrated the system’s capacity to identify suspects quickly, the false‑alert rate highlighted ongoing concerns about accuracy and the potential for misidentification.
Western Australia’s experiment adds to a growing number of Australian jurisdictions testing facial‑recognition tools, reflecting broader global interest in the technology’s role in public safety and policing.
<small>Source: The Guardian — read the original story there.</small>