London police begin testing face recognition technology in city centre, report says

Police in London are once again testing facial recognition technology — scanning shoppers’ faces during Christmas in London in The hope of finding wanted criminals through facial recognition, The Verge reported.




Police in London use a facial recognition software developed by NEC of Japan to identify the structure of a shopper’s face and compare it to a database. However, members of the public who refuse to scan for testing will not be considered suspicious.
Police claim that any citizen who refuses to analyse will not be treated as any suspect or will face administrative sanctions.
Despite “real-time” facial recognition’s dazzling potential for crime-prevention, it is also raising alarms of the risks of mistakes and abuse.
The test was conducted in central London’s shopping district, which includes Soho, Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square.

However, according to the results released by the freedom of information act, the current face recognition error rate is very high, this test is the seventh time that the London police public test.

Face recognition, especially computer technology that uses analysis and comparison of facial visual feature information for identification.