Western Australia Police criticized for cutting corners on LFR consultation, PIA

Western Australia Police invited additional criticism and controversy into their June pilot of live facial recognition with transparency and consultation decisions that an advocate for Australian First Nations people dismisses as “tokenism.”

The force trialed NEC’s Neoface m40 around the cities of Perth and Fremantle, scanning more than 130,000 faces during the pilot’s first week. That pilot included a watchlist of 4,000 reference images and resulted in 33 alerts and 19 arrests.

WA Police found one false match during the first week of the pilot, ABC News reports, but have not yet published data for the several weeks it continued after that.

ABC News quotes an Australian academic who notes facial recognition algorithms have “historically” performed worse when matching certain demographics, including women and people with darker skin.

Incomplete data

A 2023 evaluation by the UK National Physical Laboratory showed no significant demographic differentials from NEC’s real-time facial recognition algorithms at the recommended settings.

But Michael Birtwisle of the Ada Lovelace Institute points out that the UK study is of limited value in Australia, because it did not specifically examine the performance of the algorithms on First Nations people.

That leaves any conclusions about biometric error rates on the affected populations dependent on trial data, which thus far is incomplete.

“The trial will assess demographics during the deployments and gauge whether or not there is a disproportionate impact on an ethnicity or group within the community,” a WA Police spokesperson told ABC.

Assessment says no issue, watchdog says no ‘meaningful’ consultation

But the privacy impact assessment published by WA Police denies that the LFR trial will “primarily or especially affect Aboriginal people,” thus avoiding an “Aboriginal Information Assessment.”

WA has a high rate of incarceration of Aboriginal people, according to the report.

These colliding facts beg the question of what the Western Australia’s Information Commissioner that of the PIA.

The Office of the Information Commissioner for Western Australia says it was not invited to take part in “meaningful” consultation. WA Police say the force briefed the OIC in April and invited it to attend a demonstration of the technology. The OIC WA warned the Police about the centrality of transparency and accountability in building public trust in a July response.

Similarly, Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia’s (ALSWA) Legal Services Director Peter Collins says he was contacted two days before the pilot’s launch to request a 20 minutes about it.

Collins rubbished the WA Police approach to consultation as “an exercise in tokenism.”

“It can only have been by design, not chance, that facial recognition technology has been rolled out in those suburbs and places where everyone is aware that significant numbers of Aboriginal people either live or frequent,” Collins says.

WA Police state that the locations are chosen “based on policing needs and policing objectives.”

Article Topics

Australia  |  biometric matching  |  biometrics  |  demographic fairness  |  facial recognition  |  law enforcement  |  live facial recognition