Western Australia (WA) Police have revealed their facial recognition van has scanned 131,478 faces in its first week, leading to 18 arrests.
The technology scans the faces of passers-by, instantly matching them against a database of wanted criminals and missing persons. The van was deployed to 10 different metropolitan locations between June 22 and 28, 2026.
Police says anyone not matched to the list has their face blurred on screen and that video of them is not stored.
The technology generated 33 alerts and one false positive—a rate of 0.0008 percent, “reflecting a high level of system accuracy,” WA Police said in a statement.
A total of 21 Registered Sex Offenders (RSO) were identified through the alerts “and subsequently engaged by officers,” it said….
