Surveillance technology

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Investigators are drowning in visual data. SS8's AI-driven object recognition helps analysts quickly identify weapons, contraband, and anomalous objects across images, videos, and live feeds; verify geographic locations from environmental cues; and scale investigative capacity without adding headcount. Prioritize visual data for further human analysis and turn chaos into actionable intelligence - faster than ever.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Retrospective Facial Recognition has become an essential investigative technology for law enforcement and government agencies. But how will systems keep pace over the next few years to deal with the ever-increasing quantity of data sources and the use of technology modify or hide identities?

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Facial recognition has become an essential technology for law enforcement and government agencies. Retrospective facial recognition system is an ideal tool for this fast-paced world, because it helps officers to identify suspects in a fraction of the time.

OPINION: AI-enhanced surveillance tools are already transforming policing, says Milestone Systems Fellow Dr Barry Norton, and police forces that leverage intelligent video will be harder for criminals to outsmart, better informed, and faster to the scene – while those that fail to modernise risk falling behind not just in technology, but in public trust and effectiveness.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Sign up for a series of four webinars on body-worn video (BWV) in July organised by the Policing Tech Forum with Devon and Cornwall Police and the National Police Chiefs Council and supported by Axon, Motorola Solutions and Reveal. The series looks at key aspects of BWV use including managing volume data, live streaming, scrutiny and innovation.

OPINION: By the end of 2026 all Police Scotland frontline officers will wear body-worn video (BWV) cameras while on duty – one of the last UK forces to deploy the technology nationally; but the University of Stirling’s Professor William Webster and Dr Diana Miranda argue that despite the widespread use of BWV, there is little robust evidence about its effectiveness, and warn that without consistent training, scrutiny and accountability, the technology could damage community relations and encroach on citizens’ rights.

OPINION: A recent judgment by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal found that the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Metropolitan Police had unlawfully conducted surveillance into two investigative journalists; former Detective Chief Inspector Steve Christopher, a Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice at Leicester’s De Montfort University, fears this latest example of “egregious conduct” around covert policing could be “merely the tip of the iceberg”.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Join us in Stratford Upon Avon, the beautiful market town and the birthplace of William Shakespeare, 17 - 18 March 2025 for a groundbreaking conference exploring the power of collaboration between CCTV Providers and Policing.

FEATURE: A new CCTV system introduced by Cumbria Constabulary, which uses artificial intelligence analytics to search both stored and real-time footage to identify missing persons and suspect individuals and vehicles, is saving the force thousands of hours as well as improving outcomes, and could soon be accessible to officers out on patrol via mobile phones and laptops, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

ANALYSIS: In the last in a series of five articles looking at the big debates in police use of facial recognition (FR), extracted from this year’s ‘Facing the future: The rise of facial recognition in policing’ report, Policing Insight’s James Sweetland explores the remarkable global variations in the legal and regulatory frameworks governing FR use, and whether a more effective approach can balance the obvious risks against the potential benefits to secure the best possible outcomes for public safety.

ANALYSIS: In the fourth in a series of five articles looking at the big debates in police use of facial recognition (FR), extracted from this year’s ‘Facing the future: The rise of facial recognition in policing’ report, Policing Insight’s James Sweetland explores the crucial issue of privacy and intrusion – which goes to the very heart of the FR debate – and looks at the absence of legislation around FR, with much of the early oversight coming from privacy regulators.

INNOVATION: Tobias Stenström, Head of Camera Surveillance, Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Analytics for the Swedish Police Authority’s West Region, believes that data-driven policing “requires a different type of leadership” that “might be out of many bosses’ comfort zones”; speaking at a recent conference he also revealed how Swedish police are exploiting AI tools like ChatGPT and object recognition tech, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports.

ANALYSIS: In the third in a series of five articles looking at the big debates in police use of facial recognition (FR), extracted from this year’s ‘Facing the future: The rise of facial recognition in policing’ report, Policing Insight’s James Sweetland explored human involvement in overseeing FR systems – often seen as an essential requirement for a trustworthy use of the technology, but does the human presence really reduce bias?

FEATURE: Speaking at an international workshop hosted by the University of Gothenburg and CRISP, Research Fellow Amir Cahane of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem warned that Israel Police engage in “a disturbing pattern of acquire first and ask questions later” when deploying domestic AI surveillance tools – with “a lack of legal constraints” meaning that court battles over individual cases play an outsized role, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports.

WEBINAR PROMOTION: Join us 14th November 2024 for a deep dive into Axon’s cutting-edge AI-powered tools, designed to revolutionise policing workflows and boost productivity. Don’t miss this chance to see how AI is shaping the future of policing!

ANALYSIS: In the second in a series of five articles looking at the big debates in police use of facial recognition (FR) – extracted from this year’s ‘Facing the future: The rise of facial recognition in policing’ report – Policing Insight spoke to senior officers, academics and technical experts to explore concerns around bias and accuracy, a subject central to the facial recognition debate and a common reason for some people’s opposition to police use of this technology.

ANALYSIS: In this first in a series of five articles looking at the big debates in police use of facial recognition (FR) – extracted from this year’s ‘Facing the future: The rise of facial recognition in policing’ report – Policing Insight spoke to senior officers and police leaders to understand exactly how FR is a useful tool in policing’s arsenal, and why it is often described as making a significant difference to public safety.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Managing large public events such as the Parklife Music Festival present police forces with significant challenges. To ensure safety at these events, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) turns to the Axon Ecosystem, and leverages body-worn cameras (BWCs) with live-streaming capabilities to improve situational awareness and attendee safety. This case study explores the impact of body-worn camera technology on agency communication, debrief efficiency, and subject behaviour.

INTERVIEW: Policing Insight’s recent ‘Facing the future: the rise of facial recognition in policing’ report drew on 34 interviews with operational leaders and experts to examine how facial recognition (FR) is being used by police around the world and the key debates about the technology; as part of that project, James Sweetland interviewed Dr Andrew Chen, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Auckland about New Zealand Police’s approach to this technology and the debate around accuracy and bias – in this article, we share more from that insightful conversation.

INNOVATION: From advanced surveillance and data analytics to facial recognition and collars that can detect ‘anti-predation’ behaviour in farm animals sparked by the actions of livestock thieves, a recent online roundtable involving policing, academic and farming stakeholders highlighted the importance of agricultural technology – coupled with traditional policing methods – in tackling rural crime, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

INSIGHT: Policing Insight’s James Sweetland joined officers and staff from the Metropolitan Police for a live facial recognition deployment, to gain a better understanding of the operational benefits and challenges as well as the public response to this new technology.

OPINION: National Police Chiefs’ Council Chair, Chief Constable Gavin Stephens, believes facial recognition (FR) has the potential to be a game-changer for crime fighting; in this article – which appears as the foreword to Policing Insight’s latest thematic report, Facing the future: the rise of facial recognition in policing – he highlights the potential benefits of FR, and the pledges from UK policing to ensure such technology is used ethically, transparently and responsibly.

REPORT LAUNCH: Policing Insight launches a new thematic report – Facing the future: the rise of facial recognition in policing. The report aims to be a one-stop shop for everything you need to know about facial recognition; with contributions from 34 expert stakeholders from around the world, we explain the technology and highlight the big debates around its use.

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