Privacy Experts Slam WA Police's Live AI Face Scanning Trial | 10 News

Our Take

Credit to 10 News for putting numbers and legal experts on record here, because this is the same script that plays out everywhere live face scanning gets pitched to police: a vendor promises precision, and independent researchers keep finding the algorithm is far less reliable on women and people of color. Western Australia isn't Ohio or Texas, but the underlying technology and the marketing pitch are identical to what's being sold to American police departments right now — 'real-time' identification with a rubber stamp of accuracy that never holds up once someone actually audits the false-match rate.

What should worry every American watching this clip is that live facial recognition is the next logical step for a country already blanketed in automated license plate readers. Flock Safety and similar companies have spent years normalizing 24/7 automated tracking of vehicles with almost no independent bias testing or public oversight; bolting a face-scanning camera onto that same network is not a hypothetical, it's a pitch that's already being made to city councils. When a system misidentifies someone, it's not an abstract error — it's a wrongful stop, a wrongful detention, sometimes a wrongful arrest, and the burden falls hardest on exactly the communities these researchers are flagging.

If a trial in Western Australia can't get this right after review by legal advocates, there's no reason to assume a rushed rollout in a mid-size American city with even less transparency will do better. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your streets, and use our take-action guide to push back before face scanning gets bundled in next.