The South Australia police department will spend US$1.3 million on a facial recognition system that will scan images of suspected offenders against their existing databases. Revealed in tender documents from the department’s 2014 state budget, the system will be designed to be accessed from in the field as well as f
The South Australia police department will spend US$1.3 million on a facial recognition system that will scan images of suspected offenders against their existing databases.
Revealed in
tender documents from the department’s 2014 state budget, the system will be designed to be accessed from in the field as well as from office desks.
The department seeks the “provision of a secure mobile device application that is compatible with Microsoft Windows 8.x AND Samsung Android 4.4.x that enables an officer to select, capture and submit images to the facial recognition technology for matching purposes and returns the results to the
requesting mobile device via the 3G/4G network”, according to the tender documents.
But an in-house capacity is equally important: “SAPOL are seeking to deploy facial recognition capabilities to forensic, investigative and front-line policing operations, in order to enable verification, identification, and watch-list search and match functions both in-house and in-the-field via mobile devices”.
The term of the agreement reached with a vendor will be for three years with SAPOL having the option to extend for a further two year term.
In October, Australian state and federal justice ministers agreed to form a strategy that involves facial recognition technology being implemented across all federal, state and territory jurisdictions.
The tender for the SAPOL facial recognition system closes at 2:00 PM Adelaide time on 13 February 2015