By Eric King-
London’s Metropolitan Police are set to trial an automated facial recognition system to identify people at this weekend’s Notting Hill Carnival, for the first time, the eye of media.com has learned.
The technology was first trialled was last year by Leicestershire Police at the Download Festival – though no update of any assessment was publicly given.
A spokesperson for the Met told the eye of media.com ”this will be the first time the automated facial recognition (AFR) system will be used at the Notting Hill Carnival. It involves the use of overt cameras which scan the faces of those passing by and flag up potential matches against a database of custody images of individuals, whose bail conditions forbid them from attending the carnival.
”The police database is full of images of individuals who are forbidden from attending Carnival, as well as individuals wanted by police who it is believed may attend Carnival to commit offenses. The technology will be used for the purposes of catching those individuals”. In terms of how effective the cameras will be, the spokeswoman stated ” we know it will be effective, but don’t know how effective it will be because we have never used it in that type of environment before.”
”The metropolitan police office is one force and brings together police officers from all over London. The metropolitan police have purchased over 50,000 body cameras, and have already begun using them in some boroughs. They were brought into the system to make the metropolitan police ”the most transparent police force in the world”.
”Some boroughs are already using police body videos and will be using them in carnival. It has not yet been implemented across the whole of London, but that will eventually used across the police force in London and most likely the country”, the police spokesperson told the eye of media.com
There are “over 19 million custody images, which may include images other than of faces, uploaded by forces onto the PND (Police National Database).with over 16,000 enrolled in the facial image recognition gallery and search able using automated facial recognition software,” Williams revealed – a figure representing roughly a quarter of the UK’s entire population. The home office is set to publish its long awaited Biometrics and custody Review
The London carnival which holds annually, is a day of celebration that brings London’s multi-cultural community together, with a lot of music, dancing, and unfortunately, violence too.The use of automated facial recognition is a leap in the advancement of mechanisms used by the police to prevent crime. It’s current limitation is that it is directed to detecting known criminals, not unknown ones.
However the spokesperson added ” we have other various mechanisms of detecting crime that may be committed at the carnival, but the purpose of this technology is for catching known criminals and trouble makers before they get an opportunity to commit further offenses”
Once successful, it will form the basis of more extensive applications in the fight with crime and identification of guilty parties.Businesses at the carnival have braced themselves for the potential trouble that sometimes accompanies the largely attended annual event. Over 19 million people are expected to attend this years carnival.