Facial Recognition in use by Northern Territory Police Force
Information Certainty: Documented
Deployment Purpose: Criminal investigations, Surveillance, Crowd management
| Summary |
|---|
| 0 |
Products and Institutions:
| Product Deployed | NEC Face Recognition Technology NeoFace Watch CrowdOptic (Software) |
|---|---|
| Institutions ⠉ | NEC NEC CrowdOptic |
| Datasets | NEC Neoface (Dataset) Unknown Dataset 0041 CrowdOptic (Dataset) |
| Search software |
Status and Events:
| Status | Ongoing |
|---|---|
| Events | Start (2 January 2015, Documented, ?, No description) |
| Start Date | |
| End Date |
Users:
| Involved Entities | |
|---|---|
| Managed by | Northern Territory Police |
| Used by | Northern Territory Police |
Location:
| City | Adelaide |
|---|---|
| Country ⠉ | Australia |
Description[ ]
In 2020, it emerged that many or all Australian police forces were using or had trialled some form of facial recognition technology, though it is difficult to ascertain which ones exactly and what technologies they use. However it can be seen that Northern Territory Police have been using the technology since at least 2015 when they first trialled NEC. This is evident from an NEC case study.
In Australia, there has been a lack of transparency about which agencies are using facial recognition technologies and how these are being used. While all Australian policing agencies are reportedly using or trialling these technologies, New South Wales Police officially acknowledge it on their web page. They have reportedly used the technology to help identify lawbreaking protesters. The Northern Territory Police have even won an award for their face recognition project, which reportedly identifies suspects in under ten seconds at their watchhouse 1
Northern Territory Police began trialling the state of the art technology - which allows the rapid identification of people coming into custody - in September 2015. The technology assists in the identification of individuals who present at a Watch House who may have existing medical issues or who might pose a risk of harm to themselves, other members of the public or police members. “As a result of the win in Adelaide, Northern Territory Police and NEC will now go on to compete at the national iAward final being held in Melbourne in late August 2016,” Sergeant Brand said 3
The facial recognition system plays a key role in NT Police’s investment in mobile technology across handheld devices and image capture equipment. There are currently 190 cameras in the network monitored by the police department’s CCTV unit, in addition to the mobile CCTV units that can be moved on-demand to ‘hot spots’ and major public events. The government has also issued 1,330 tablets to police officers and installed satellite communications in 51 police vehicles in remote locations. More than 100,000 images have been copied into the system database from existing Police information holdings. Footage or images captured on CCTV are submitted to NT Police’s facial recognition team who can load it into the facial recognition system for analysis and comparison with existing images in the database 2
Although these features did not initially facilitate live recognition, in 2017 it was reported that NEC was rolling out this capability for its Australian customers in collaboration with CrowdOptic.
NEC Australia and vision analytics firm CrowdOptic have announced a live video streaming security system that enables real-time facial recognition of footage captured from fixed cameras and mobile camera sensors in body cams, smartphones, and drones. CrowdOptic's technology uses triangulation to detect when two or more cameras are aimed at the same person, which, according to NEC, offers new capabilities in mobility to NEC's NeoFace solution. NEC expects mobility to play an important role in smart city technology, and said using internet-connected mobile cameras integrated with NEC's biometrics is the "future of public safety". "The integration with NEC's NeoFace facial-recognition software means that fixed cameras can interact with body cams and smart glasses to enhance identification," the local arm of NEC said in a statement. "This provides the ability to feed multiple perspectives of an individual to the NeoFace database, speeding and enhancing the accuracy of the facial-recognition process." 4
References
- ^ x
- ^ "Information is key to public support for police use of facial recognition technology". (2021) <http://theconversation.com/information-is-key-to-public-support-for-police-use-of-facial-recognition-technology-173584> Accessed: 2022-06-16
- ^ "Success for Northern Territory Police at iAwards". (2016) <https://pfes.nt.gov.au/newsroom/2016/success-northern-territory-police-iawards> Accessed: 2022-06-16
- ^ NEC. Case Study: NEC facial recognition helps NT Police solve crime and increase public safety. , 2016.
- ^ "NEC Australia to offer real-time video facial recognition". (2017) <https://www.zdnet.com/article/nec-australia-to-offer-real-time-video-facial-recognition/> Accessed: 2022-06-16