Police forces in the UK are preparing to introduce Operator Initiated Facial Recognition (OIFR) technology that enables officers to take photos of suspects using an app on their mobile phones and then search for a match among millions of criminals stored on their database. The app, already tested by three police forces, is called iPatrol. Trials by South Wales, Gwent, and Cheshire police forces have already been conducted, and the National Police Chiefs' Council plans to deploy the technology nationally by next year.
However, the technology has proved to be controversial, as the iPatrol app was used disproportionately by South West Wales Police to target ethnic minorities, with 31% of individuals photographed being either black or Asian. The ethnic minority population in the region is only 8.5%.
What is this page?
You are reading a summary article on the Privacy Newsfeed, a free resource for DPOs and other professionals with privacy or data protection responsibilities helping them stay informed of industry news all in one place. The information here is a brief snippet relating to a single piece of original content or several articles about a common topic or thread. The main contributor is listed in the top left-hand corner, just beneath the article title.
The Privacy Newsfeed monitors over 300 global publications, of which more than 4,350 summary articles have been posted to the online archive dating back to the beginning of 2020. A weekly roundup is available by email every Friday.
