POLICE are about to embark on the first trial of automatic face-recognition software linked to CCTV cameras. The systems can scan crowds of people and match faces against a database of wanted criminals.
The trials, in an unnamed inner London borough this autumn, will use the British-designed Mandrake system, which can even discover the identity of a suspect from an e-fit image.
However, privacy campaigners have raised concerns about the trials and have called on the Government to issue strict guidelines.
Using software developed in America, Software & Systems has also taken the the process a stage further to allow the use of the system for large-scale search-and-compare operations.
"A simple example might be the use of a CCTV camera at an airport filming people passing a particlar point," said Patricia Oldcorn, marketing director of Software & Systems. "As people approached, the software would compare the image of their faces against its own database and immediately identify known suspects."
Based on advances in neural intelligence, the software has been programmed to match key facial features and to learn from its past mistakes. Unaffected by facial hair, spectacles, hat and so on, the software concentrates on the area of the face between the top of the eyebrows and the bottom of the chin and from one side of the temple to the other.
Ben Turner of Software & Systems International said: "We found that the search engine was even capable of making a comparison between an e-fit image of a person and a photograph held on the database."
In police investigative terms, the news is of vital interest. E-fit images have traditionally provided the means to ask for the public's help in identifying a suspect. But it is a slow process requiring a manual search of police records - Mandrake now offers the opportuntiy of identifying suspects in seconds.
The problem of a suitable database remains. The availabilty of digital images of criminals is at best patchy - most images are still hard-copy photographs. The new driving licence and passports will soon have digital photographs.
A spokesman for the pressure group Privacy International said: "We asked the Government to prohibit the sale of this technology, and urged that strict guidelines be issued to the police."
© Copyright Telegraph Group Limited 1998.