Police in Hyderabad are looking to implement a facial recognition system to work with CCTV surveillance feeds, according to an article on The Economic Times. The system will be used to identify criminals and possible terrorists.
Interviewed for the article, a high-ranking police official explained that the city already has a robust network of CCTV cameras, so it’s mostly a matter of implementing the software to analyze the images coming through. Scans of individuals committing any kind of offence could then be compared against a database of known or suspected offenders, allowing the police to detect a crime and potentially identify its perpetrator almost immediately. According to the article, multiple vendors have already approach the police service about providing the technology, and a pilot project will be taken up to test it out for a month.
CCTV facial recognition is an increasingly popular deployment, with police authorities around the world setting up such systems; it was even used recently to add an extra layer of security around officials during President Obama’s visit to India. Of course, it isn’t without controversy: The head of Scotland Yard recently called for all citizens in the UK to consider implementing CCTV cameras in their homes to help police catch criminals using facial recognition technology, which was sharply criticized by privacy and civil rights advocates in the country. Still, the utility of such systems is undeniable, and they’re likely to continue to rise in popularity as law enforcement authorities learn to strike the right balance against privacy concerns.
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May 7, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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