Commissioner says human oversight central to Rock’s digital border A network of live facial recognition and CCTV cameras deployed at the border, Main Street and other locations in Gibraltar provides the Royal Gibraltar Police with a powerful tool to combat crime, but at the heart of its effectiveness is human oversight, police Commissioner Owain Richards said. The cameras are controlled by the RGP and their use must always be proportionate and relevant to a policing purpose, he told the Chronicle in an interview. The way fixed facial recognition cameras have been deployed on the Rock is a departure from how they have been used in the past in the UK and the EU, where such technology is normally restricted to temporary deployments and sensitive locations. But even that is starting to change. Conscious of their value as tool to tackle crime, static cameras are set to be deployed in the West End and Soho by the end of the year, albeit not without controversy. The cameras were deployed in Gibraltar after immigration controls were removed at the land border. Facial recognition is hosted on the National Centralised Intelligence System by OSG, the contractor which operates the platform, and the RGP can upload images from its management database of people of interest. Images are selected for the live facial recognition watchlist on a case-by-case basis under an internal RGP policy, taking into account the seriousness of the offence, the relevance of the person to Gibraltar, proportionality and legality. That may include people wanted for serious crime or by the courts and individuals sought by other jurisdictions through agencies such as Interpol or the UK National Crime Agency, but only where there is a clear rationale to believe they may be in Gibraltar or the surrounding region. It also enables police to