WA police scanned 1.38m faces in five months and logged nine errors

single source· 1 articles · confidence: medium · first seen 2026-11-02 06:12 UTC

What this means for you

Nothing to act on unless you supply or procure face matching. If you do, the nine errors are not a per-match error rate — no watchlist size was published — so the trial cannot be cited as an accuracy figure either way.

Western Australia police scanned 1,380,882 faces with real-time facial recognition over a five-month trial, across 100 deployments in 43 regional and metropolitan locations. The force reports 122 arrests, nine incorrect alerts, and officers engaging with 146 registered sex offenders. Real-time means camera feeds are checked against a watchlist as people walk past, not afterwards. Police have not said how large the watchlist was, so the nine errors cannot be converted into an error rate, and no decision on extending the trial has been reported.

Key facts

  • ·Police scanned 1,380,882 faces during the trial source
  • ·The trial ran 100 deployments across 43 regional and metropolitan locations source
  • ·The five-month trial concluded on the Saturday before the article's 2 November 2026 publication date source
  • ·The trial produced 122 arrests source
  • ·The system generated nine incorrect alerts source
  • ·Officers engaged with 146 registered sex offenders during the trial source

What the sources say

  • The Guardian — Carries the police figures: scan volume, arrest count, mistaken matches and sex-offender contacts.

Sources

The original reporting. Follow these — they did the work.

← the wire