Police forces in the UK are preparing to introduce Operator Initiated Facial Recognition (OIFR) technology that enables officers to take photos of suspects using an app on their mobile phones and then search for a match among millions of criminals stored on their database. The app, already tested by three police forces, is called iPatrol. Trials by South Wales, Gwent, and Cheshire police forces have already been conducted, and the National Police Chiefs' Council plans to deploy the technology nationally by next year.
However, the technology has proved to be controversial, as the iPatrol app was used disproportionately by South West Wales Police to target ethnic minorities, with 31% of individuals photographed being either black or Asian. The ethnic minority population in the region is only 8.5%.
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