How facial recognition technology aids police
Police officers’ ability to recognize and locate individuals with a history of committing crime is vital to their work. In fact, it is so important that officers believe possessing it is fundamental to the craft of effective street policing, crime prevention and investigation. However, with the total police workforce falling by almost 20 percent since 2010 and recorded crime rising, police forces are turning to new technological solutions to help enhance their capability and capacity to monitor and track individuals about whom they have concerns.
One such technology is Automated Facial Recognition (known as AFR). This works by analyzing key facial features, generating a mathematical representation of them, and then comparing them against known faces in a database, to determine possible matches. While a number of UK and international police forces have been enthusiastically exploring the potential of AFR, some groups have spoken about its legal and ethical status. They are concerned that the technology significantly extends the reach and depth of surveillance by the state.
Until now, however, there has been no robust evidence about what AFR systems can and cannot deliver for policing. Although AFR has become increasingly familiar to the public through its use at airports to help manage passport checks, the environment in such settings is quite controlled. Applying similar procedures to street policing is far more complex. Individuals on the street will be moving and may not look directly towards the camera. Levels of lighting change, too, and the system will have to cope with the vagaries of the British weather.
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As with all innovative policing technologies there are important legal and ethical concerns and issues that still need to be considered. But in order for these to be meaningfully debated and assessed by citizens, regulators and law-makers, we need a detailed understanding of precisely what the technology can realistically accomplish. Sound evidence, rather than references to science fiction technology --- as seen in films such as Minority Report --- is essential.
With this in mind, one of our conclusions is that in terms of describing how AFR is being applied in policing currently, it is more accurate to think of it as “assisted facial recognition,” as opposed to a fully automated system. Unlike border control functions -- where the facial recognition is more of an automated system -- when supporting street policing, the algorithm is not deciding whether there is a match between a person and what is stored in the database. Rather, the system makes suggestions to a police operator about possible similarities. It is then down to the operator to confirm or refute them.
By Bethan Davies, Andrew Dawson, Martin Innes (Source: https://gcn.com/articles/2018/11/30/facial-recognitionpolicing.aspx, accessed May 30th, 2020)
The word “while” in “While a number of UK and international police forces have been enthusiastically exploring the potential of AFR” has the same meaning as
The body of officers representing the civil authority of government is known as police. Police typically are responsible
for maintaining public order and safety, enforcing the law, and preventing, detecting, and investigating criminal activities. These
functions are known as policing. Police are often also entrusted with various licensing and regulatory activities. However, police
scholars have criticized this popular understanding of the word “police” — that it refers to members of a public organization
having the legal competence to maintain order and enforce the law — for two reasons. First, it defines police by their ends rather
than by the specific means that they use to achieve their goals. Second, the variety of situations in which police are asked to intervene is much greater than law enforcement and order maintenance.
There is now a consensus among researchers that the common feature among all the different agencies engaged in policing is the legal competence to enforce coercive, nonnegotiable measures to resolve problematic situations. Such situations are characterized by their potential for harm and the need to solve them urgently before they develop that potential. Hence, the actual use of coercion or the threat of using it allows police to put a quick, nonnegotiated, and conclusive end to problematic situations.
Internet: <www.britannica.com> (adapted)
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In the last sentence of the second paragraph, the word “actual” means present.
Based on the previous text, judge the following item.
It can be concluded from the last paragraph that the fishermen are no longer able to find the same kind of fish in the same spot of the river.
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Check the sentence in which the indefinite article has been correctly used.
