Australian police trial live facial recognition

Western Australia is becoming the latest jurisdiction to deploy live facial recognition technology in public policing with a one-week trial designed to locate wanted offenders and vulnerable persons, arriving as similar deployments in the UK continue to face mounting legal and civil liberties challenges.

On June 19, the Western Australia Police Force (WAPF) announced that it will trial Live Facial Recognition (LFR) to help prevent and detect crime, locate wanted offenders, and support vulnerable members of the community. LFR uses cameras to detect faces in real time by creating a biometric template based on a person’s features and checking this against a list of people the police are interested in, such as those wanted for serious offenses, reportable offenders, missing persons, and individuals subject to lawful restrictions.

Visible cameras will be positioned near marked police vehicles in designated public spaces, providing officers with real-time alerts when individuals on a strictly controlled police alert list are detected, authorities said. If the system deems someone a match, it generates an alert, allowing the police to decide whether to speak with the person or take further action.

“The trial aims to enhance community safety by enabling faster police responses, helping locate vulnerable people, and supporting the identification of high-risk offenders,” the WAPF said. “LFR is used in intelligence-led and time-limited deployments. All deployments are overt and occur in public spaces where LFR has the greatest potential to assist the WA Police Force in fulfilling its operational duties.”

In terms of privacy—a major public concern with such technology—the Australian authorities clarified that images of community members who are not on the alert list are automatically pixelated in real time and not stored, and that no data would be shared with third parties.

In addition, it said that extra scrutiny would be applied before authorizing deployment near locations where there may be community sensitivity, such as hospitals, schools, and places of worship.

“We are committed to being open and transparent about how LFR technology is developed, deployed, and used,” the WAPF said. “Maintaining the trust of our communities is essential as we introduce this new and important tool to support public safety.”

According to a June 19 update from the Government of Western Australia, the trial will run from June 22 through to June 28.

A global trend emerges, but critiques remain

Australia’s trial of facial recognition technology to aid policing follows on from the United Kingdom, where the technology has been in use for the best part of a decade, to mixed reception.

In January 2026, the Metropolitan Police (Met)—London’s police force—faced a legal challenge over its use of LFR from two campaigners who argued that the technology is expanding without adequate safeguards.

According to a BBC report, the barrister for Shaun Thompson, a youth worker who LFR wrongly flagged, and Silkie Carlo, the director of privacy campaigning organization Big Brother Watch, told the U.K. High Court that the Met deployed the technology 231 times in 2025 and scanned about four million faces, adding that on December 17 alone LFR cameras at Oxford Circus scanned more than 50,000 people in four and a half hours.

Plaintiff Carlo’s Campaign group, Big Brother Watch, has also launched a petition against the spread of LFR, arguing that the technology is intrusive, discriminatory, and undemocratic.

“Police and private companies in the UK have been quietly rolling out facial recognition surveillance cameras, taking ‘faceprints’ of millions of people — often without you knowing about it,” reads the petition. “This is an enormous expansion of the surveillance state — and it sets a dangerous precedent worldwide. We must stop this dangerously authoritarian surveillance now.”

Despite such naysayers, the U.K. recently expanded its use of the technology, with the British Transport Police (BTP) announcing in February that it had begun a six‑month trial of live facial recognition technology to be deployed across several London stations.

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