Privacy concerns over police's new 'state of the art' facial recognition system

Thursday, 5 December 2019

Stuff takes to the streets of Wellington to ask members of the public how they feel about the use of facial recognition technology by some supermarkets.

NZ Police has enlisted the services of an American company to design a 'state of the art' facial recognition system.

Stuff can exclusively reveal Dataworks Plus has been selected to upgrade the existing outmoded police biometric system.

The law enforcement technology company was responsible for a police facial recognition system in Maryland, which holds millions of drivers licence photos and mug shots.

The system it is designing for police will be rolled out in the latter half of 2020.

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A man watches as a visitor tries out a facial recognition display at a booth for Chinese tech firm Ping'an Technology at the Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) in Beijing in 2018 (file photo).

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A trove of documents obtained under the Official Information Act show it will offer advanced capabilities.

They include automatic facial recognition technology capable of searching stills from CCTV against a database of faces held by police.

A 'request for proposal' document shows police want that photo database to be able to import images of prisoners, firearms licence holders, missing persons and registered child sex offenders.

Police also want the system to be able to capture, store and search clothing descriptions, tattoos, scars and other marks.

They already have a rudimentary facial recognition system but it is about a decade old and Stuff understands it is now rarely used, if ever.

Dataworks and police respond

Todd Pastorini is the Dataworks Plus executive vice president and general manager, based in California, who manages the NZ police account.

He said the system coming to NZ would typically be used to examine still images from CCTV after a crime in the hunt for a suspect.

The algorithm would search for faces in the image against a mugshot database, he said.

'Let's say you're dealing with a million mugshot photographs in your database and you have 600,000 males and 400,000 females.

'It basically helps you take that 600,000 pictures and narrow it down to a list of the top 100.'

It would still be up to an investigator to choose which suspect was the best match from those 100 candidates, he said.

'It's still up to a detective … to put that person at the scene of the crime.'

The use of facial recognition systems by law enforcement has been dogged by controversy, often centred around accuracy.

A display for facial recognition and artificial intelligence is seen on monitors at Huawei's Bantian campus on April 26, 2019 in Shenzhen, China (file photo).

Facial recognition technology trialled by the London Metropolitan Police mis-identified members of the public as potential criminals in 96 per cent of scans in London, the Independent reported in May.

Asked about the reliability of the Dataworks Plus system, Pastorini said: 'we don't make accuracy statements.'

Accuracy was more applicable to access control facial recognition systems rather than those used by law enforcement, in his view.

'It's really a matter of shortening a list.'

Supermarket giant, Foodstuffs is using facial recognition in some stores.

His company's systems, which use a face recognition algorithm developed by NEC, were proven and tested, he said.

'It's market standard, it is state of the art.

'It's extremely capable, it does very well with off angle images, it does very well with poor quality surveillance images.'

Other concerns about facial recognition technology is that it more frequently mis-identified people with dark skin.

But Pastorini was again relaxed about this, saying the forensic systems he had experience with did not show a skintone bias.

One of the systems his company developed was for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS).

In 2011, the system began running searches on mug shots before expanding to include millions of driver's license photos in 2013, according to the Georgetown Law Centre on Privacy and technology.

Dataworks Plus executive vice president and general manager Todd Pastorini says the system his company will provide NZ police is state of the art.

Pastorini said NZ police did not ask for driver's license integration for their new system.

Police national forensics services manager Inspector John Walker would not be interviewed for this article but supplied a brief written statement.

Facial recognition would not be run against drivers licence photos because that database is held by the NZ Transport Agency, not police, he said.

The upgrade of the Automated Biometric Identification Solution (ABIS) system was now in its detailed design phase.

Its implementation was planned for the third quarter of 2020, he said.

Privacy concerns

University of Auckland associate professor of law Gehan Gunasekara says the new police facial recognition system in the works raises privacy concerns.

University of Auckland associate professor of law Gehan Gunasekara researches information privacy and is chair of the Privacy Foundation NZ.

He takes a sceptical view of the need for Kiwi cops to adopt facial recognition technology, saying technology companies 'like to look for a problem where there isn't one'.

'We need to ask, do we really need some of these new services?'

He says facial recognition represents a big jump from traditional CCTV systems, which in his view function perfectly well for most law enforcement processes.

'Once you get facial recognition then you can connect people with places and you've got a permanent log of where people are.

'That is of concern to me. Once you have that infrastructure in place then it's the thin edge of the wedge.'

He believed without careful supervision, such systems could represent another step in the direction of an 'Orwellian' surveillance state.

'I'm not saying we're going to get to that, but I'm saying every step in that direction needs to be carefully monitored.'

Of particular concern was the lack of public consultation about the introduction of the facial recognition system, he said.

'If you want to build public confidence in something you need to engage with the public.'

The fact the company was experienced with supplying the systems to American customers did not fill Gunasekara with confidence.

'America is not an ideal place for privacy standards, because they essentially don't have any.'

During his interview with Stuff, Pastorini was asked if police had discussed the Privacy Act with him, which controls how agencies collect, use, disclose, store and provide access to personal information.

They had not, he said.

He had not heard of the Privacy Act or its 12 principles.

'I am not familiar with them for the country of New Zealand, no.'