Arabic version: تجربة التعرّف على الوجوه في أستراليا الغربية تمسح 1.38 مليون وجه

According to The Guardian, Western Australia Police scanned 1,380,882 faces during a five-month real-time facial recognition trial that ended on Saturday. The program produced 122 arrests, nine incorrect alerts, engagement with 146 registered sex offenders and 10 welfare-check locations.

Police conducted 100 deployments at 43 metropolitan and regional locations, using cameras mounted on or positioned near marked police vehicles in designated public areas. The deployments included three operations at the Perth Royal Show, where 223,749 faces were scanned. Police recorded 15 alerts, three arrests and seven interactions with registered sex offenders there.

A police spokesperson said the nine incorrect alerts equated to an error rate of 0.00065% across all scans. Police commissioner Col Blanch said nobody was arrested or made a complaint following a false alert, although officers interacted with each person and asked relevant questions. He said the technology was not perfect but that officers handled alerts as they would reports from members of the public.

Civil Liberties Australia chief executive Bill Rowlings challenged the way police calculated the rate, saying it should be assessed against whether arrests lead to convictions. The Office of the Information Commissioner WA had said when the trial was announced that it was not involved in implementation and warned of “collective privacy harms”.

Police said faces not matched to the alert list from police databases were pixelated in real time, deleted immediately and not stored. The surveillance vans have been removed from public deployment while the force evaluates performance, community impacts, safeguards and whether requirements were met.