Facial Recognition in use by New South Wales Police
Information Certainty: Documented
Deployment Purpose: Criminal investigations, Surveillance, Crowd management
| Summary |
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| 0 |
Products and Institutions:
Status and Events:
| Status | Ongoing |
|---|---|
| Events | Start (2 January 2003, Documented, , No description) |
| Start Date | |
| End Date |
Users:
| Involved Entities | Australian Federal Police |
|---|---|
| Managed by | New South Wales Police |
| Used by | New South Wales Police |
Location:
| City | Sydney |
|---|---|
| Country ⠉ | Australia |
Description[ ]
New South Wales Police, like other Australian police, use facial recognition. There are some uncertainties surrounding the extent of their usage. Though they state they do not use live facial recognition, they have used it to identify protestors. They also use the Australian Federal Police's face database.
On the police website their use is stated as follows:
Can Commonwealth Face Matching Services be used for mass surveillance? No. Face Matching Services (FMS) are not permitted to be used as a mass surveillance tool, and it does not accept video (live or recorded) as the basis for any search. Only static photos can be submitted for a search. FMS are not linked to CCTV cameras 1
How does the Commonwealth Face Matching Services use my personal information? Facial images that a NSW Government agency may have collected from you, such as a driver licence photograph, will in future be made available to other Australian Government agencies via the FMS. Importantly, facial images from NSW Government agencies have not yet been made available to the Commonwealth Government for use via the FMS. Facial images of NSW citizens will not be made available via the FMS until the NSW Government is satisfied that appropriate privacy and security safeguards are in place. In the meantime, specialist NSWPF officers have limited access to the FMS using facial images from Commonwealth agencies. The NSWPF is using the limited access to test the system and evaluate the privacy, security and accountability safeguards, in anticipation of facial images collected by NSW Government agencies being made available via the FMS to other law enforcement agencies 1
A report on NSWP revealed the following:
It comes after News Corp tabloid the Daily Telegraph published on Saturday an interview with the head of the NSW police’s facial recognition unit, assistant commissioner Tony Crandell, who stated police wanted to be “as transparent as possible” about its use of the technology, which they realise “people are not going to agree about”. Crandell said NSW police use PhotoTrac, a system that has been in place since 2004. The system has access to more than 1m charge photos, which police can then run comparisons against CCTV still photos. One still can bring up 100 different potential options, and officers need to examine each one closely. The report also revealed NSW police trialled the technology on live CCTV footage at a gun show in order to identify people banned from buying guns, but it was decided pursuing the use of facial recognition on live footage was not worthwhile 4
The federal government has been pursuing the introduction of a centralised database, known as “the Capability”, which would bring together photos collected by a range of state and federal agencies, including police charge photos, passport photos, immigration documents, and driver’s licences from across the country 4
In 2021, the police used the technology to identify anti-lockdown protestors.
Detectives are now combing social media and footage from CCTV and police-worn body cameras to identify and punish everyone who defied stay-at-home orders, which are now entering their fifth week. Police said on Sunday they had issued 510 fines in the past 24 hours, with the “vast majority” coming from Saturday’s protest. At least 57 people have been charged over the unrest, including two for allegedly striking a police horse 2
In 2021, NSWP were seeking a new technology provider to update their system (PhotoTrac). It cannot be determined at this time who the new provider is or whether the system became fully integrated.
Amid calls to ban the use of facial recognition by law enforcement, the force has revealed plans for a new integrated biometrics capture and analysis platform (IBP) project to better “anticipate, detect and disrupt crime”. The system, which NSW Police is yet to receive funding for, is slated to give State Intelligence Command “increased facial recognition capabilities”, while improving the quality of biometric data. NSW Police has used PhotoTrac – described as a “custom suite of systems to record and store images of charges persons to formulate photographic identification parades” – since 2003. The system is used to compare a “provided image (probe image) against a range of facial image in NSWPF [NSW Police Force’s] existing databases and Nexis, the Commonwealth Interoperability Hub”. Potential matches from the more than a million charge photos are then compared by facial examiners to produce leads for investigators. But with the system at end of life, NSW Police has issued a request for information to find an end-to-end biometrics capture and analysis solution that is “fit-for-purpose, compliant and future proofed”. The RFI reveals the new solution would “move away from focusing solely on facial images, to enable the integration of other biometric modalities to provide a complete biometric profile of an offender”. “The solution will integrate multi-modal biometric templates to increase data capture as well as intelligence and forensic holdings,” NSW Police said 3
References
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- a b "Facial Recognition - NSW Police Public Site". (2022) <https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/crime/terrorism/terrorism_categories/facial_recognition> Accessed: 2022-06-15
- a b Taylor, Josh. Calls to stop NSW police trial of national facial recognition system over lack of legal safeguards. , 2021.
- ^ Boseley, Matilda. Sydney police fine hundreds of anti-lockdown protesters for ‘filthy, risky behaviour’. , 2021.
- ^ "NSW Police wants platform to create "complete biometric profile" of crims". (2021) <https://www.itnews.com.au/news/nsw-police-wants-platform-to-create-complete-biometric-profile-of-crims-572319> Accessed: 2022-06-16