UK police say 92% false positive facial recognition is no big deal

Enlarge / A police facial recognition van is seen at the UEFA Champions Festival at Cardiff Bay on June 2, 2017 in Cardiff, Wales. (credit: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images)

A British police agency is defending (this link is inoperable for the moment) its use of facial recognition technology at the June 2017 Champions League soccer final in Cardiff, Wales-among several other instances-saying that despite the system having a 92-percent false positive rate, "no one" has ever been arrested due to such an error.

New data about the South Wales Police's use of the technology obtained by Wired UK and The Guardian through a public records request shows that of the 2,470 alerts from the facial recognition system, 2,297 were false positives. In other words, nine out of 10 times, the system erroneously flagged someone as being suspicious or worthy of arrest.

In a public statement, the SWP said that it has arrested "over 450" people as a result of its facial recognition efforts over the last nine months.

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