An Garda Síochána say they do not have a reference database to match images against, but they want access facial recognition technology anyway. Photograph: iStock in policing, Ireland risks introducing a technology that scientific evidence has demonstrated is ineffective, inherently flawed, opaque and discriminatory. Rights and civil liberties advocates across the globe have formed coalitions to warn of its dangers.
The Government here first announced plans for the use of FRT by An Garda Síochána in May 2022. But this was met with a wall of opposition from experts across Irish universities and 13 NGOs, including theDiane Abbott racism rows highlight baffling ways of British politicsargued that in order to “vindicate the human rights of citizens in a digital society, An Garda Síochána must have access to modern digital image analysis and recognition tools”.
Audits from Cambridge researchers have found that deployments of FRT in England and Wales failed to meet all minimum legal and ethical standards and requirements NIST evaluated the algorithm using high-quality, clean images collected from US visa applications, border kiosks and mugshots. But An Garda Síochána’s stated intention is to use any imagery it legally holds or can access. The gardaí's input images will be drawn from CCTV , often containing multiple faces in a single image , and blurry images. To cite NIST’s laboratory study for the proposed Irish real-world use is, by accident or design, misleading.