Forensics

Facial Recognition and Body Cam – Horizon of Law Enforcement

Police body cameras are rapidly being deployed in cities across the US, and we may be failing to fully consider the risks of pervasive surveillance these devices pose. in addition, a huge new issue is rapidly approaching – body cameras that use facial recognition technology.

Taser International, the biggest American producer of police body cameras, announced a couple of months back plans to incorporate facial recognition technology into its cameras in the future. And so far, not a single city has placed limits on this use. There’s a need to talk about the real ways in which facial recognition devices could be used.

Facial recognition works by creating and scanning for “face prints,” a unique biometric identification based on distinct facial features, such as the distance between the centers of an individual’s eyes. Computer programs can scan photos or video to develop new face prints and can scan footage (including real-time footage) to identify individuals that match face prints in an existing database. Software on the market already claims to be capable of comparing millions of faces per second.