Police in Western Australia have deployed live facial recognition technology in marked vans across Perth, marking a first for Australian law enforcement. The system scans the faces of passersby in real time and compares them against a watchlist of around 4,000 individuals with outstanding warrants, registered sex offenders, and missing persons, alerting nearby officers to potential matches. Police Commissioner Col Blanch stated the trial is not intended for mass surveillance, but rather to locate missing people, apprehend serious offenders, and monitor repeat sex offenders. Safeguards include limiting the watchlist to serious offenders and retaining no records of faces that are not on the list. While police have used facial recognition on prerecorded footage for more than a decade, this real-time deployment carries documented risks that Australia's legal and governance systems are ill-prepared to manage.

Background: Facial Recognition in Policing

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