Facial recognition biometricsAustralia looks at facial recognition for law enforcement
Police in Victoria, a southeast state in Australia, want to use facial recognition biometrics to assist its law enforcement personnel in apprehending wanted people; experts warn that the technology is not yet advanced enough to be used as evidence in court
Facial feature scan // Source: punt.nl
Victoria, a southeast state in Australia, is about to launch a face recognition system called iFace to assist its law enforcement personnel in apprehending wanted people. Experts warn, however, that the technology is not yet advanced enough to be used as evidence in court, according to an IT Wire article.
One such expert, senior photographic technologist for the FBI Richard Vorder Bruegge, spoke his warnings at the Biometrics Institute’s 11th Australian conference in which he was a keynote speaker.
Bruegge’s main point in his warning of how facial recognition technology is used in law enforcement revolves around its relatively high false negative and false positive rates wherein the chances of the wrong suspect being charged or the right suspect being let go are too high to accept.
While Australian officials in favor of using the technology are still pushing for an increase in use, they do acknowledge the early purposes must be limited to investigation and intelligence gathering as well s make sure agencies utilizing the technology are properly disciplined in its use.
