The Salt Lake Tribune and Suffolk University have released the results of a poll that shows that Utah citizens are surprisingly comfortable with facial recognition. The poll was conducted after federal law enforcement officers used facial recognition to scan the state’s entire driver’s license database in a search for suspects. According to the survey, 63…
The Metropolitan Police have started using CCTV facial recognition cameras to monitor pedestrians in London, following through on plans that were announced at the end of January. The first batch of cameras was installed atop a police van that was parked outside the doors of the Stratford Centre shopping area on Tuesday. The people who…
Fingerprint recognition has helped the police make an arrest in an unsolved murder case from 1975. The crime took place in a San Diego apartment on New Year’s Eve, when Navy dental technician Alvaro Espeleta was strangled and bludgeoned to death inside his own home. Though the trail had been cold for decades, police received…
British privacy advocates are once again calling for greater oversight after exposing the South Yorkshire Police’s involvement in a 2018 facial recognition trial program at the Meadowhall Shopping Center in Sheffield, England. During the trial, the Police supplied British Land, the owners of the shopping center, with photographs of three serious offenders and one missing…
London’s Metropolitan Police are officially moving forward with plans to introduce facial recognition cameras at various points throughout the city. The cameras will only be active for five or six hours at a time to search for suspects on a customized database of serious offenders. The police force previously tested the system on its own…
Privacy advocates are in an uproar in the wake of a bombshell report from the New York Times. The report details the activities of a company called Clearview AI, an American startup that has quietly provided facial recognition services to more than 600 law enforcement agencies. Unlike other facial recognition tools – which often limit…
ImageWare has joined forces with the Laxton Group to provide law enforcement agencies with better biometric identity tech for use in the field. To that end, Laxton will integrate ImageWare’s biometric software into its line of rugged Chameleon devices in addition to becoming an approved ImageWare reseller. Laxton’s Chameleon hardware allows law enforcement officers to…
Democratic junior senator Chris Coons (D-Delaware) is cosponsoring a bipartisan piece of legislation that aims to regulate the use of facial recognition technology on the federal level. The other sponsor for the bill — known as The Facial Recognition Technology Warrant Act — is Utah Republican senator Mike Lee (R-UT). It would require federal law…
The Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee is backing the creation of a new post for a biometrics commissioner, however they are calling for greater powers to be granted to the position to ensure that personal data is kept safe and privacy is protected. MSPs on the committee concluded that the need for a biometrics commissioner to…
Winnipeg Police Headquarters will have 11 biometric hand scanners installed at entrances and exits to track which officers are in the building at any given time, the CBC reports. The addition of the scanners comes as a result of a $158,000 human resources upgrade approved by Winnipeg’s city council in 2018, and will be connected to…
The New York City Police Department’s fingerprint database was temporarily brought down by a virus last year from a contractor’s computer, according to the New York Post. The contractor — who was at the police academy in Queens to set up a digital display — unknowingly uploaded a virus to 23 machines connected to the…
A pair of senators from both sides of the political aisle have tabled a new bill that would place restrictions on the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement agencies. The Facial Recognition Technology Warrant Act — sponsored by Christopher Coons (D-Del.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) — would require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant and…
The New York Police Department has finally finished deleting what was an illegal database of fingerprints obtained from juvenile offenders more than two years after being ordered to do so by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS). Calls to delete the database originated in 2014 after an arrest of a youth…
Indian privacy advocates are once again voicing their concerns as the government of India prepares to hand out a landmark contract for a national facial recognition surveillance system. The Prime Minister opened the bidding for the contract back in September, for a system that is supposed to help an understaffed police force identify criminals and…
Hong Kong police have access to facial recognition technology, but it isn’t clear if they have deployed it in their response to ongoing public protests, reports the South China Morning Post. Citing anonymous individuals who are familiar with the matter, the report says that Hong Kong’s police force has been contracting facial recognition technology from…
Detroit lawmakers are expressing concern about law enforcement’s use of facial recognition technology. City council member Roy McCalister, Jr. will be discussing the technology at an upcoming community forum, while US Representative Brenda Lawrence is planning to introduce legislation that would regulate the technology at the federal level. The Detroit Board of Police Commissioners formally…
Biometrics News – Fingerprint Recognition Two police forces in Wales have begun using INK Biometrics (Identity Not Known) in the field in a pilot project that will last three months before a review is conducted on its efficacy. South Wales Police and Gwent Police have deployed ten mobile devices to be shared between the two…
Law enforcement’s unmonitored use of facial recognition technology has come under increasing scrutiny in the past few months. Bernie Sanders has echoed San Francisco and called for a complete ban on the police use of the technology, while Microsoft recently stated that it will refuse to sell its facial recognition tech for mass surveillance. With…
“… at least one of the researchers involved in the project has highlighted its potential use for police in monitoring crowds…” Chinese researchers have developed a 500MP camera system able to capture detailed images of tens of thousands of faces in a single frame, according to a new report. The system was developed by researchers…