Facial recognition technology has become one the most developed over recent years that most clearly support policing tasks. However, when they are adopted, many factors must be borne in mind, both from a legal point of view (mainly because of privacy-related issues when taking, storing and processing images), and the technical point of view (the precision of the identification and the security of systems that use them, among others). The Department of Justice of the USA has elaborated and provided its police force with a model in order to apply these systems, especially focused on privacy-related questions.

One of the reasons is that the shortcomings in the development and implantation of these systems, and the malfunctions in its use may imply highly potential risks, both in the area of civil responsibility and negative perceptions on the part of the public. Moreover, given that US regulations applicable to these situations are disperse and complicated, the Department of Justice wants privacy-related risks to be reduced, as well as establishing minimum and common elements about areas such as the training and preparation of its users, and the supervision and responsibility of the entities.

The document includes a first introductory section with a review of facial recognition technology, the use of the document and a list of resources (both relevant to technical questions and legal aspects and other complementary resources). The main part of the document is a model with which agencies and entities wishing to apply this system or facial recognition programme have all their needs met in foreseeable cases. In some cases the content will simply need to be copied along with the adding of the names of the reference entities, and in others the model gathers a range of potential cases so that entities or agencies can choose the one that best suits their circumstances, needs or the system that they want to use.

The sections chosen refer to questions of motivation, regulations, the use of systems and some information obtained by using it, information processing, responsibility and training for users.

The document is available on the following link:

https://www.bja.gov/Publications/Face-Recognition-Policy-Development-Template-508-compliant.pdf.

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