Coalition to hear proposal on Garda use of facial recognition tech after concerns raised

Minister for Justice Simon Harris is to bring a proposal on the use of facial recognition technology (FRT) to Coalition leaders “very shortly”, after an intervention from the Green Party raised concerns over his plan to fast-track its rollout.

A spokesman for Mr Harris said he is “aware of differing views on the issue and is fully engaging with Government colleagues”.

Mr Harris had planned to amend a piece of legislation currently working its way through the Oireachtas to enable for the rollout of FRT by the Garda – but that plan ran into mounting opposition in recent days.

Both the chair of the Justice Committee, and then the Green Party, said the technology should be underpinned by standalone legislation rather than rolled out using amendments. A standalone Bill would enable the full process of pre-legislative scrutiny, involving public committee sessions with experts and other stakeholders.

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Speaking to RTÉ Radio on Wednesday, Green Party Minister of State Ossian Smyth defended his party’s opposition to the addition of facial recognition technology to legislation currently going through the Oireachtas on the use of body cams by An Garda Síochána.

Mr Smyth said the Green Party was not opposed to the use of facial technology in some circumstances but they wanted separate standalone legislation that would go through pre-legislative scrutiny.

“I absolutely agree with the Garda Commissioner that it is very useful technology. We want the gardaí to have any technology that’s needed to investigate serious crimes. So there’s no real dispute there. What we’ve said is that we don’t think it should be included in the body cam legislation, which is halfway through its process, that we think that it should be properly debated and that should go to the Justice Committee.”

[ Green Party urges scrapping of fast-track plan for Garda to use facial recognition technology ]

There were different types of facial recognition technology, he said. Technology that could scan a crowd and immediately identify people, like a car registration number – “it’s equivalent to having a registration number around your neck to some extent. It’s as if you are immediately recognisable and that’s obviously very useful”.

“If a serious crime has been committed, if a person has been abducted and you need to find maybe the victim, you can find the person who carried out the crime and you’re under pressure for time. There are times where you do need to immediately recognise people using technology.

“But there are other times, you can imagine the use of this technology to indiscriminately scan across a crowd and pick out people immediately and out of that crowd and then just store that information because you might want to use it at some point in the future. You might store all the people who attended a particular protest, or you might just record people who were walking down the street and store that somewhere and then use that in the future for whatever purpose. And that then that morphs into mass surveillance. And mass surveillance isn’t really compatible with democracy.”

Mr Smyth said that pre-legislative scrutiny could happen within months, noting there was a balance of rights to be determined.

A spokesman for Mr Harris said: “FRT has potentially transformational benefits in regard to certain specific areas of police work, in particular retrospectively examining CCTV which is already in the possession of An Garda Síochána.”

“The accurate and efficient identification of suspects and equally, the elimination of individuals from inquiries, are key pillars to ensure that An Garda Síochána meets its statutory obligations. The ability to automate searches on legally held images and footage would allow the organisation to operate more efficiently and effectively.

“The current process of long manual searches which potentially involves a team of gardaí manually going through CCTV footage for months to find a short few clips which may be relevant to an investigation, is well outdated and extremely inefficient.”

This tool would also assist a member of An Garda Síochána in finding the perpetrators of child sexual abuse and to finding and protecting the children who are subjected to this heinous crime. It would assist the gardaí to identify missing persons and victims of kidnapping. It would also help to identify suspects in serious crimes, a process which is currently done manually. It would be particularly necessary where time is of the essence and for the preservation of life.