Hong Kong’s police force said to have access to facial recognition AI tech – but are they using it?

Hong Kong law enforcement authorities have access to artificial intelligence software that can match faces from any video footage to police databases, but it is unclear if it is being used to quell months-long pro-democracy protests, according to people familiar with the matter.

Police have been able to use the technology from Sydney-based iOmniscient for at least three years, and engineers from the company have trained dozens of officers on how to use it, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is not public. The software can scan footage including from closed-circuit television to automatically match faces and licence plates to a police database and pick out suspects in a crowd.

In addition to tracking criminals, iOminiscient’s artificial intelligence can be used for everything from finding lost children to managing traffic. In one training session that took place after the protests began in June, the people said, officers asked how to automatically identify licence plate numbers using dashboard cameras.

Questions over the use of facial recognition technology have loomed over the protests, stoking fears that Hong Kong is moving closer to a mainland-style surveillance state. Demonstrators have worn masks, destroyed CCTV cameras, torn down so-called smart lamp posts and used umbrellas to hide acts of vandalism. Authorities in turn used an emergency law this month for the first time in more than half a century to ban face masks, a move that triggered increased violence.

“Hong Kong people are afraid of being captured by the CCTV cameras,” said Bonnie Leung, a district councilor and a former leader of the Civil Human Rights Front, which has organised some of the biggest protests in the past few months. “Why are people still wearing face masks? Because of the police surveillance.”