Western Australia Facial Recognition Trial Processes One Million Faces, Leading to 122 Arrests

Western Australia Facial Recognition Trial Processes One Million Faces, Leading to 122 Arrests

Over one million individuals had their faces scanned during a real-time facial recognition trial conducted in Western Australia, which resulted in 122 arrests and nine erroneous alerts.

According to Western Australian police, the five‑month trial, which ended on Saturday, captured 1,380,882 faces through 100 deployments spanning 43 regional and metropolitan sites.

In addition to the 122 arrests, the alerts prompted officers to interact with 146 registered sex offenders and to locate ten individuals for welfare checks.

The deployments comprised three operations at the Perth Royal Show, where 223,749 faces were scanned, generating 15 alerts, three arrests, and seven engagements with registered sex offenders.

A police spokesperson stated that the system produced nine incorrect alerts out of 1.38 million scans, yielding an error rate of 0.00065%.

At a media conference on Sunday, Western Australian Police Commissioner Colonel Blanch addressed the false matches, confirming that officers interacted with each person.

“I want to be very clear on those false alerts,” he said. “No one was arrested. No one made a complaint. Each one did result in an interaction with that person and asking them relevant questions.”

“It’s a very, very, very low number. It’s not zero. We’d love it to be zero. But I think the important thing for us is to engage with our community just like we would if a human thought someone was a wanted person.”

Blanch acknowledged that the technology was “not perfect” and that authorities were aware of its limitations before the trial, but emphasized that officers responded to alerts in the same manner as they would to a member of the public’s suspicion.

Nevertheless, civil‑liberties advocates have criticized the way Western Australian police presented the error rate.

Bill Rowlings, chief executive of Civil Liberties Australia, argued that police were “severely gilding the lily” by citing an incorrect alert rate of 0.00065%, and suggested that the true rate should be measured by the proportion of arrests that led to convictions.

“We will only know the true incorrect rate once the 122 arrested individuals have their day in court,” he said.

He added that, if half of the 122 arrested were not convicted, the “incorrect” rate would rise to 50%, noting that police conducted nearly 1.4 million scans “with no reasonable suspicion whatsoever.”

When the trial was announced, the independent privacy watchdog, the Office of the Information Commissioner of Western Australia (OIC WA), stated that it had not participated in implementing the trial and warned of potential collective privacy harms. The OIC WA was contacted for comment.

On Sunday, Commissioner Blanch said the trial “focused on responsibly using modern technology to identify individuals posing a risk, while ensuring the vast majority of people could continue their daily lives without impact.”

According to the trial guidelines, cameras mounted on or near marked police vehicles scanned faces in designated public areas, matching them against an alert list derived from police databases. Police reported that images of individuals not on the list were pixelated in real time and deleted immediately, without being stored.

The trial previously attracted criticism over privacy concerns and algorithmic bias. Experts warn that the technology may disproportionately impact marginalized groups, who are overrepresented on police watchlists, as facial recognition algorithms have historically shown higher false‑match rates for individuals with darker skin tones.

The surveillance vans have now been withdrawn from public deployment while the force conducts an internal evaluation of the technology’s on‑ground performance and community impact, including reviewing its safeguards and verifying that all requirements were met.

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