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The Conversation
The Conversation
Adam Andreotta, Lecturer, School of Management and Marketing, Curtin University

WA Police’s facial recognition trial delivered strong results. But was it an ethical success?

Police WA Police Australia
Tibor Janas/Pexels, The Conversation, CC BY-SA

The results of Australia’s first live facial recognition trial have been released. Since June 2026, the Western Australian Police Force has been trialling the technology across metropolitan and regional WA.

During the trial, more than 900,000 faces were scanned, generating 209 alerts (notifications that a scanned face matched someone from a police watch list) and 79 arrests.

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