User:CimlaGus/sandbox/swp facial recognition

Controversy etc....

South wales police became one of the first three Police forces in the United Kingdom to use Facial recognition to police large events alongside the Metropolitan Police and Leicestershire Police, although the latter force discontinued use soon after adoption. The use of facial recognition was met by much criticism, mainly revolving around the high rate of false positives with over 90% of people identified being incorrectly flagged. The use of the technology at football games was described by the North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Arfon Jones as "disproportionate" adding that its use could lead to miscarriages of justice. Prof Paul Wiles, the UK biometrics comissioner criticised the lack of government oversight of the technology saying that due to the lack of legal framework governing the technology it is at the polices discretion whether the public benefit exceeds the "significant intrusion into an individual’s privacy" caused by the use of facial recognition.

The first time a court had ever considered the use of facial recognition technology was when someone who had been photographed by the technology brought a legal challenge against the use of facial recognition by South Wales Police arguing that its use constitutes a breach of privacy. This legal challenge was unsuccessful but is currently being appealed.

South Wales Police have also been criticised by civil liberties groups as the technology is more likely to give a false positive if the person being scanned is a woman or a ethnic minority. South Wales Police refute this claim on the basis that "AFR does not define race of an individual. When a person is potentially identified through the system. The identification is made on the match between the person’s eyes and is based on algorithm matches. The camera does not define race or sex of an individual." Although a Cardiff University assessment of the technology on behalf of the police did not test for misidentification on the basis of ethnicity or gender and acknowledged that this is a known issue with facial recognition technology "Multiple research studies have reported algorithmic biases regarding ethnicity in facial recognition systems. This was not an aspect empirically tested by the current study. It is an area of concern though."

In August 2019 South Wales Police announced that they would be trialing the use of facial recognition technology on 50 officers phones for three months, although no update has been given since.