The Home Office wants to provide UK police forces with automated editing technology that can be used on digital media, audio and video files.
Police Minister Chris Phillip said he wanted to make developing a redaction tool that could be rolled out nationally a top priority, as there is currently very limited use of automated redaction technology across UK police forces.
The Department of the Interior has already funded the Accelerating Capability Environment (ACE), a division within the Homeland Security Group focused on tackling challenges arising from digital and data, to conduct a market review of what is available from suppliers. ing. ACE was also asked to build evidence of how technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning can contribute to efficiency savings.
This evidence case will be used to accelerate the development and deployment of AI-powered redaction tools across the country, aimed at making it easier for law enforcement to share information with other organizations while protecting sensitive information. .
ACE worked with business analysts to learn more about the types of tools available on the market and the software and technology being used or developed locally by each faction. We then tested various tools using synthetic data from Surrey Police.
In the next phase, six candidates demonstrated the tool to key senior stakeholders, demonstrating the breadth of the technology's potential. As a result, the Home Office is now using the report produced by ACE to decide the next steps to bring AI-powered automated redaction tools to police forces as soon as possible.
The news comes as Prime Minister Jeremy Hunt's Spring Budget gives Britain's police forces significant funding. This includes more than £230 million for police forces to deploy time-saving technology, such as the automatic redaction of personal information captured by surveillance cameras and the redaction of irrelevant faces from body-worn cameras. contained.
It will also be used to conduct video interviews with witnesses and victims, pilot the use of drones as first responders in road accidents, and use AI to triage calls to the police non-emergency number 101. That is scheduled. The government also plans to create a police center. Productivity that supports police use of data and AI.
The National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) announced plans in late 2023 to roll out a mobile-based facial recognition tool, known as operator-initiated facial recognition (OIFR), to police forces nationwide in 2024, the focus of some controversy. It became. , there are further plans to increase police use of retrospective facial recognition (RFR) software by 100% by May.
This is in line with a wider push by the government and law enforcement agencies to expand the use of facial recognition technology across UK police forces.
In his keynote speech at the NPCC's annual summit in London, 15 November 2023, NPCC chair Gavin Stevens said that helping UK policing become an “effective science-led service” It will play an “important role” in the above, and further emphasized the following research. South Wales Police discovered the technology had been used retrospectively, reducing the time it took to identify a suspect from 14 days to minutes.