https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/6/17324496/south-wales-police-automated-facial-recognition-false-positives-privacy-security

During last summer’s Champion’s League Final in Cardiff, Wales, South Wales Police began a facial recognition pilot program designed to check event-goers against a database of 500,000 images of persons of interest. Almost a year later, The Guardian reports that the pilot yielded 2,470 potential matches, of which, 2,297 were found to be “false positives.”

In a records request (via Wired), the South Wales Police revealed that at events such as the 2017 Champion’s League Final, the Automated Facial Recognition (AFR) ‘Locate’ system flagged 2,470 people — with only 173 positive matches. Figures from the report reveal that of the 2,685 alerts from 15 events, only 234 have been “True Positives”, with another 2,451 false positives. But in its press release, the SWP note they’ve made 2,000 positive matches and have used that information to make 450 arrests in the past nine months. We’ve reached out to the SWP to ask about the differences in numbers, and will update if we hear back.