Work on legislation to allow for facial recognition technology (FRT) is “well advanced” and will be introduced during the lifetime of the Government, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan has said.
Members of An Garda Siochána have started to use body-worn cameras in recent months but successive governments have fallen short on the issue of FRT, the use of which is opposed by civil liberties groups.
In a reply to a parliamentary question by acting Social Democrats leader Cian O’Callaghan, the Minister set out how this Government proposes to introduce FRT, and the limits and safeguards surrounding its use.
The Minister said the programme for Government included a commitment to allow for the use of biometric technologies in “certain, very controlled circumstances” as a tool to process evidence in serious cases.
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He said that work was now “well advanced” on the drafting of a Bill to amend the Recording Devices Act.
This, he said, will provide for retrospective use of biometric technologies, including facial recognition. He said the general scheme of the Bill has provided for what he describes as the ethical use of FRT in limited circumstances only.
“The Bill will provide for use of FRT, but that use will be subject to regular review and the results will require further examination by a specially trained member of Garda personnel,” he has said.
“Garda use of this technology will also be subject to codes of practice which will set out the very high standards of data protection and human rights control required.”
Mr O’Callaghan has said the Bill will not provide for the use of real-time FRT but added the Government has not ruled out its future use.
Live facial recognition technology uses live video footage of crowds passing a camera and automatically compares their images against a police database of people on a “watch list”.
The Minister said the Government has committed to introduce live FRT in cases of terrorism, national security, and missing persons, with strict safeguards. This will be considered for inclusion in a subsequent Bill, he said.
Supporters argue that FRT could improve Garda efficiency by speeding up video analysis in investigations, but a number of civil society groups including the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) have opposed its use in Ireland.
The ICCL has described FRT as a “highly intrusive and invasive technology that is faulty, unreliable and discriminatory” and risks innocent people being misidentified.
“It is a flawed but powerful technology that, when used by police, risks the misidentification of individuals as suspects for crimes they did not commit” said Olga Cronin of the ICCL.
She noted that the technology is least accurate when it is used to identify women and people with darker skin tones.
“In the short term, Garda use of FRT could increase the likelihood of women and people of colour being wrongfully misidentified and questioned by gardaí for crimes they have not committed. This is already happening in the UK and the US.”
