Policing, ethics and emerging technologies

The project

Academic work has and continues to be done on Intelligent Facial Recognition (IFR), Live Facial Recognition (LFR) and Retrospective Facial Recognition (RFR), typically focusing on low accuracy, human rights, data protection, anti-discrimination law, compliance, and future trends such as overlaps with biometrics deployed to gauge intention and emotion states.

With North Wales Police also being interested in public opinion about these technologies, and others used to predict criminality and likelihood of being a victim of crime, with their input we are conducting research to ethical issues raised by these technologies. While interested in national and international implications our focus is on life outside of major cities.

To explore this we are interviewing police, observing internal governance groups, running quantitative attitudinal surveys, and conducting qualitative workshops with diverse citizenry. This is to closely assess feelings, opinion, concerns and interest in police use of new technologies. Specific issues include human rights, proportionality, trust and governance.

The team

Bethan Loftus (PI): Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice, Bangor University

Vian Bakir: Professor of Journalism & Political Communication, Bangor University

Martina Feilzer: Dean of College / Professor in Criminology & Criminal Justice, Bangor University

Alex Laffer: Research Fellow, Bangor University

Andrew McStay: Professor of Technology & Society, Director of Emotional AI Lab, Bangor University

Full project site here