‘More needs to be done’ to avoid police facial recognition technology leading to innocent people being wrongfully arrested account to the police service watchdog.
A report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services into police use of facial recognition technology has found a lack of safeguards on the use of the technology retrospectively.
This technology analyses images of unknown individuals after an incident has occurred and compares them to custody images held by the police.
It was found that some investigators did not appreciate that retrospective facial technology results should be treated as ‘intelligence rather than evidence,’ and should be corroborated through further enquiries to prevent incorrect identification.
Their report also found that further improvement is required to address the potential for bias in facial recognition technology algorithms which have previously been found to put ethnic minority groups at risk of misidentification.