Live Facial Recognition: real-time, secure technology to enhance security
Live facial recognition (LFR) is an AI-based technology that uses static or mobile cameras to capture real-time images of people’s faces and compares them against a pre-existing database to identify individuals of interest. This process happens almost instantaneously, allowing for quick identification and alerting, if required, so that there is always a human-centred and ethical decision making process.
LFR can be applied in a number of scenarios and sectors:
- Public Safety and Law Enforcement: LFR is deployed in public spaces like airports, train stations, and large events to identify suspects, persons of interest or missing persons.
- Access Control: Many secure facilities, such as government buildings and corporate offices, use LFR to control entry and ensure only authorized personnel can access certain areas.
- Retail and Commercial Spaces: Retailers use LFR for security purposes, to prevent theft, and to analyse customer behaviour and preferences.
- Transportation Hubs: Airports and train stations use LFR to streamline passenger identification and enhance security.
- Events and Venues: Concerts, sports events, and other large gatherings use LFR to manage crowds and ensure safety.
- Healthcare: Some hospitals and clinics use LFR to verify patient identities and streamline check-in processes.
These applications highlight the versatility of LFR, but despite its benefits, this also raises concerns about privacy and ethical use, making it important to implement with careful consideration of human rights and privacy laws and the need for robust regulations and guidelines to ensure that the technology is used responsibly and ethically.
A focus on Public Safety
The use of LFR in Public Safety and Law Enforcement has, especially in the UK, expanded over recent years with leading forces, such as the Metropolitan Police Service and South Wales Police, pioneering its use backed by scrutinised ethical and usage policies, extensive testing and technology trials.
Use of LFR by the MPS (Jan 2024 – Nov 2024). 160 deployments are estimated to have been 667053 faces and compared image’s of databases of on average, 14344 per deployment with an average false alert rate of 0.012%. The resulting 1113 alerts have led to officers making 500 arrests.
With regular deployments in support of targeted policing operations and major public events, such as concerts and carnivals, the technology is now considered by these forces as a key tool in their operational policing activities.
As a provider of the world’s leading facial recognition technology we work closely with our customers and take part in independent testing that gives confidence to policymakers, and the public, that live facial recognition technology is not only safe and effective to use, but that it also greatly assists officers in taking known offenders off the streets.
About NeoFace Watch
NeoFace Watch is NEC’s high performance, highly scalable facial recognition solution, providing fast and accurate results for the most demanding real-time or post-event facial recognition use cases.
The NeoFace algorithm is ranked as highly accurate by the UK’s National Physical Laboratory and ranked as #1 by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
It’s designed to find a needle in a haystack, reducing a problem down to a much smaller review process. Built upon 40 years’ experience and world leading AI, it’s highly tolerant of ageing, angles, headwear and environmental factors such as lighting.
It performs consistently regardless of age, ethnicity and gender by combining the best feature-matching and AI technologies. Underpinned with built-in safeguards to protect privacy and ensure proportionate use, NeoFace Watch has GDPR-compliant audit records & reports and easy to use data-retention tools.
Find out more here Facial Recognition Software | NEC Software Solutions.
