: On the same weekend as
our anti-racism rally, South Wales
Police, supported by the police and crime commissioner,
decided it was an appropriate time to restart in the city centre
the use of facial recognition technology that it had been forced
to halt by the Court of Appeal because of concerns over its
inbuilt racial bias. According to the UK Government's own
biometrics and forensics ethics group, the lack of representation
of ethnic minority faces in the training data on which the
technology used by the police is based means it is more likely to
identify innocent black people as criminals. This will exacerbate
the racial disproportionality in rates of detention that you,
yourself, have acknowledged. In Scotland, the use of this
technology is banned for this reason. We lack the power to do so
currently in Wales, but will you at least support the prohibition
of its use on publicly owned land like the Senedd steps, where
the rally was held on Sunday?
(First Minister of
Wales): I'm very well aware of the concerns that surround
face recognition technology, and I think those concerns deserve
to be taken very seriously. I know that my colleague has had an opportunity to discuss
this and allied matters with the lead PCC for Wales, , and we will continue to
make sure those concerns are properly represented to PCCs, and
indeed to chief constables where it's an operational matter.
