Another slightly myopic article
The guy who was arrested and de-arrested was down to a mix up over warrants, so the facial recognition presumably did its job correctly, at least that's how I read it from the linked article at the bottom.
And it's all very well saying there were 35 false positives resulting 5 unnecessary stops, but there's no mention of any successful ones. If that's because there weren't any, then privacy issues aside this thing is a massive waste of resources. In any case, before getting all uppity, we'd need to compare this to "off-line" facial recognition, as in, officers simply recognising (or thinking they recognise) someone and then either detaining them or comparing them to a photograph and detaining them. It happens all the time, and it's not always the right person. Or sometimes it is and they have very convincing fake ID!
Which isn't to say them holding 19 million images without adequately explaining in themselves isn't a concern, of course.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
