Police Facial Recognition – The Latest

With the Metropolitan Police Services’ (MPS) director of intelligence recently defending and pushing for a wider rollout of facial recognition technology, we look the current situation, the likely way forward, and its implications. 

What Is Facial Recognition Technology? 

The kind of facial recognition technology called Live Facial Recognition (LFR) that police have used at special assignments and high-profile events (e.g. sports and other large public events) is a biometric technology system that maps facial features from a video (or still photo) taken of a person (e.g. while walking in the street or at an event). The video image is then compared to information stored in a police database of faces to find a match. The cameras are separate from the database which is stored on a server and the technology must, therefore, connect to the server to use the database and match a face in a specific area.  Facial recognition is often involuntary, i.e. it is being used somewhere that a person happens to go – it has not been sought or requested.