The Unitary Police Service (SPU) said in a statement on Thursday that the facial recognition technology to be added to the police forces’ citywide CCTV camera system next year will only be used when the police investigate crime cases, adding that no cameras installed across the city will be equipped with facial recognition devices and the technology will only be installed in the back office facilities of Macau’s CCTV camera system.
The Unitary Police Service said in August that 50 cameras of the citywide CCTV camera system will be equipped with facial recognition technology, while another 50 cameras will be equipped with automatic number-plate recognition technology, and that they will come into use on a trial basis in the first quarter of next year.
The Unitary Police Service also said in August that for the fourth phase of the citywide CCTV camera system project – the installation of which is still underway, 100 cameras will be equipped with the two recognition technologies, and that the citywide CCTV camera system will then have a total of 200 cameras equipped with the two recognition technologies.
According to Wikipedia, automatic number-plate recognition is a technology that uses optical character recognition on images to read vehicle registration plates to create vehicle location data. It can be used in CCTV cameras, traffic enforcement cameras, or cameras specifically designed for the task.
The statement noted that currently, when police officers need to check CCTV footage during their investigations into suspected criminal cases, they need to check recorded video clips or images manually. The statement said that the situation was time-consuming and required a large amount of human resources, which was often affecting the progress of the investigations, preventing the police from taking follow-up action within a short period of time.
The statement said that therefore the police forces planned to introduce the facial recognition technology to the citywide CCTV camera system with the aim of increasing the “effectiveness” of the system.
The statement also said that after studying the matter, the police forces now only plan to introduce the facial recognition technology to the back-office equipment and devices of the citywide CCTV camera system, so that police officers no longer need to check recorded video clips and images manually. The statement reaffirmed that no CCTV cameras installed across the city will be equipped with facial recognition devices.
The statement noted that the application of the facial recognition technology involves “strict” requirements to meet the technical specifications of the CCTV cameras that have been installed at different locations in the city. The statement said that therefore the police forces will choose 50 cameras that meet the required specifications among the cameras in the first, second and third phases of the citywide CCTV camera system, to test the operation of facial recognition, in the first quarter of next year. According to the Macau Post Daily, the statement said that the police forces will also choose 50 cameras that meet the requirements among the cameras in the fourth phase, to test the operation of facial recognition, in the fourth quarter of next year.
