BSIA introduces ethical and legal use guide for Automated Facial Recognition (AFR)

The British Security Industry Association (BSIA), of which CCTV Surveillance’s parent company, Tensor PLC, is a member of, has recently launched an ethical and legal use guide for Automated Facial Recognition (AFR).

A first of its kind, this guide following recommendations on responsible use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and encompasses useful terms and abbreviations, ethical uses, and more. The guide has a specific focus on distinctive application types verification (is it you?) and identification (who is it?).

It showcases a precise picture of how AFR works and is designed to remind users of what to consider before adding a facial recognition solution to their security system.

Both industry experts and the general public should be able to understand the framework as it is aimed at all levels, whilst matching key messaging with that of the UK Government’s Surveillance Camera Commissioner.

Dave Wilkinson, Director of Technical Services at the BSIA who is leading the BSIA’s AFR working group said: “This collaborative piece of work among industry experts has produced a guide with advice and recommendations on ethical and legal AFR usage, which will appeal to anyone in or out of the physical security industry*. Its aim is to ensure it does not cause harm or discriminate against any persons in either a public or private setting.

“The use of AI is an exponentially growing part of daily life and we must ensure that all stakeholders are aware of the ethical and legal considerations of using these solutions. If not, this beneficial technology could be misused, leading to loss of trust and increased scepticism of the technology. We want to make sure the general public know that this ethical and legal guidance is out there for companies to follow. Compliance with the law is paramount using this technology, and this guide will provide companies with the basis to demonstrate their commitment to complying with the ethical realities, consequences and impacts of using an AI/AFR solution.”

CCTV Surveillance – The experts in deploying Facial Recognition CCTV systems

The Facial Recognition CCTV solution supplied by CCTV Surveillance dynamically compares images of individuals from incoming video streams against those stored in a predefined access control list and immediately sends alerts when a positive match occurs.The technology yields a very good level of performance despite partial occlusions of the face, the use of glasses, scarves or caps, changes of facial expression, and moderate rotations of the face. Moreover, it does not allow users to be impersonated using photographs.
This biometric technology is the perfect solution to control the access to restricted security areas, especially since we’re talking about a completely automated system that requires very little interaction with the operator.
Our Facial Recognition CCTV system can be easily integrated with existing ID management products and enables administrators to easily create Whitelists/Blacklists for specific areas, while subjects can be very easily enrolled from one or more photographs.
The system fully supports runtime alarm management, is highly tunable (control based on time-frames, sequentially, etc) and even allows alarms to be exported to common formats (PDF, Excel) and remote devices (mobile, PDA, tablet, security control centre).