Facial recognition technology used to catch predator

A Live Facial Recognition (LFR) operation launched by police in London caught a registered sex offender with a six-year-old girl.

David Cheneler, 73, was identified with a six-year-old in south-east London back in January after police began using LFR cameras to identify wanted offenders.

Cheneler was found to be in breach of his Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO), which explicitly states that known offenders can’t be alone with a child. The child predator was also found with a knife in his possession.

He was sentenced at Kingston Crown Court after having previously pleaded guilty to breaching his SOPO conditions and possessing a weapon, the BBC reports.

“LFR cameras are focused on a specific area; when people pass through that area, their images are streamed directly to the Live Facial Recognition system and compared to a watchlist,” the Metropolitan Police said.

The technology, which was tested by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), uses a “high-performing algorithm” to detect targets and prevent crime.

According to the Metropolitan Police, facial recognition tools identify individuals from images if a target has provided misleading information.

Facial recognition “can also help provide an identification of someone who is unconscious or seriously injured and unable to communicate who they are.”

This technology is also said to be used retrospectively to help officers “establish who a person is or whether their image matches against other media held on databases.”

The way the technology works is that it uses live video feeds of crowds passing cameras and compares the images to a list of people who are wanted by the police.

“The technology can precisely pick a face out of a dense crowd, something which would be impossible for an officer to do. It means the police can quickly and accurately identify wanted criminals and take them off the streets,” the UK government website reads.

Once a target has been identified, an alert is sent to police, who then decide to pursue the person in question. The data collected is then supposedly deleted immediately if a match isn’t made.

While facial recognition can be helpful in catching suspects, many people are concerned about their use in public spaces.

Particularly, facial recognition tools using artificial intelligence (AI) are often biased and can lead to the arrest of innocent people, generally people of colour and women.

The technology has already been shown multiple times to be unreliable for people of color, women, and older people.

Activists and researchers have long claimed that the potential for errors while using the technology is too great and that mistakes could result in the jailing of innocent people.