Finnish police reviewing constitutionality and cost of implementing facial recognition

A working group with Finland’s National Police Board is reviewing the constitutionality and cost of implementing a facial recognition system to help them more easily identify people from the large number of images that its surveillance camera network provides.

According to a report in YLE, police currently monitor their country-wide surveillance cameras in cities, roadways and towns every day and when a crime is committed, police must pore through hundreds of images manually and watch hours of real time video to find out what actually took place.

Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) spokesperson Arto Tuomela commented that the task is so great that police have a special group of investigators who are charged with manually reviewing those images, one at a time. The time consuming process is also susceptible to human error.

Tuomela added that police are unable to properly process all of those surveillance camera images and video and that acquiring facial recognition technology would help to reduce law enforcement’s workloads. “The new technology could help to speed up a criminal investigation.”

Article Topics

biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  Finland  |  law enforcement  |  privacy  |  surveillance cameras