Irish Examiner view: We need more gardaí but facial recognition could help the force do its job

Irish Examiner

4 days ago

Many claims are made to support the widespread introduction of facial recognition technology (FRT). Mostly they relate to policing and the efficiencies which could be gained in an era when An Garda Síochána continuously finds it difficult to fill vacancies.
This was underlined this week when it was revealed that 7,000 fewer drug searches were carried out last year, compared to 2022. They dropped 15% for the entire country, but by as much as 43% in Clare/Tipperary and 34% in Cork City.
If this is a consequence, as officers maintain, of fewer gardaí 'on the streets' then what will happen when almost 1,900 members of the force become eligible to retire over the next three years?
There is an inexorable logic to future demands that this shortfall be managed, in part, by more widespread use of technology. Unfortunately, that runs directly into mounting worries about civil liberties and the rights of ordinary citizens to pursue legitimate interests free from unjustified official intrusion and oversight.
Politicians recognise the dangers of being portrayed as agents of some form of deep state. They have been slow to introduce body cameras for guards and our government is taking baby steps on plans for incorporation of real-time facial recognition technology into next gen surveillance techniques.
Justice minister Jim O'Callaghan has said a bill currently before the Dáil will not provide for the use of real-time FRT but its future deployment has not been ruled out in cases of terrorism, national security, and missing persons 'with strict safeguards'. This would have to be considered for inclusion in any subsequent bill.
Live facial recognition technology uses video footage of crowds passing a camera and automatically compares their images against a police database of people on a 'watch list'. Senior officers will, no doubt, be keenly observing what happens next door.
The UK, along with Germany, is already Europe's leading exponent of CCTV with more than 5m units in position compared to the few thousand we have in Ireland.
Now the Metropolitan Police, the UK's largest force, is set to double its use of live facial recognition to up to 10 deployments every week.
It justifies the move as part of a restructuring to offset the loss of 1,400 officers and 300 staff in a budgetary crisis. Its new tactics will be implemented at the sometimes tempestuous Notting Hill Carnival at the end of this month. The Met's commissioner, Mark Rowley, says:
It's a fantastic piece of technology. It's very responsibly used, and that's why most of the public support it.
The problem for civil liberties campaigners resides in the last line of that quote.
The majority of citizens don't like society being under-policed, something which they equate with criminals being given an easy run and producing the kind of gloomy results contained in the recent drug search statistics.
Last year, British police scanned some 4.7m faces using the technology, more than double the figure for 2023. Most senior officers believe the cameras are on their way to becoming 'commonplace' in England and Wales.
The challenge for our society is to ensure the law on FRT, and any protection it contains for the rights of citizens, does not get outpaced by its use.
Crimefighting success in nearby jurisdictions is likely to increase clamour for its deployment.
When happiness is the best revenge
The tariffs announced on Friday for 69 trading partners of the US — ranging from 41% for Syria to 10% for the UK — have all the hallmarks of a running joke. But a joke of the worst possible kind, one which has gone on too long.
Shoppers enjoying a hula hoop demonstration in Cork in the run-up to Christmas, 1958. Joan Anderson, who sparked the hula hoop craze in the US died this week aged 101. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive
It would be easy to complain this morning but, to draw a lesson from Monty Python, it is better to look on the bright side of life.
And there is plenty there to lighten our load.
American scientists have just confirmed that the world's longest streak of lightning — a 'megaflash' — covered more than 500 miles, from Texas to the outskirts of Kansas City.
Meanwhile a holidaymaker rockpooling on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides has rediscovered a species of jellyfish, Depastrum cyathiforme, thought to have been extinct for 50 years.
If both these reports carry a whiff of what used to known in newsrooms as 'the silly season', then we commend the heartwarming story following the death of the Australian woman who brought the concept of the hula hoop to the US, igniting one of the biggest crazes of the previous century.
Joan Anderson, who died this week aged 101, failed to gain financially from a fad which had hundreds of millions of participants.
She filed a lawsuit against the toy company which exploited her idea and eventually settled for minor compensation.
But, in a message we might all usefully reflect on in 2025, Joan said: 'Why be angry with something you can't change? The world isn't fair but life goes on.
'I had a great life. My husband lived to be 87 and we had 63 wonderful years together.
'Happiness is the best revenge.'
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Last supper for Gregg Wallace
'Who's the Daddy?' It's just the sort of slang phrase you can imagine being used by Gregg Wallace at the height of his laddish popularity as a TV personality, something that viewers will be able to experience for conceivably the last time starting next week.
Allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour and language were made against presenter Gregg Wallace after the forthcoming MasterChef series was recorded. Picture: BBC/PA
It's certainly an adequate description of MasterChef, which in its various iterations, can be viewed as the durable forerunner of international format programming.
From its launch in 1990, under the rather different stewardship of Loyd Grossman, it has been mimicked by a number of hugely successful shows all utilising a comfortingly predictable participatory and voyeuristic formula.
What is common to all these programmes is that they contain lesser or greater amounts of humiliation for the contestants and the occasional soupcon of cruelty, presumably just enough to meet modern tastes without, showrunners hope, tipping over into something darker.
The global MasterChef franchise has been better than most at attracting interest, watched by hundreds of millions worldwide. The upcoming series, filmed last year and which will begin on BBC One next Wednesday, was produced before allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour and language were made against Wallace.
His co-presenter John Torode was accused of making a racist comment — euphemistically known as 'the N-word' — at a social gathering more than five years ago. He says he has no recollection of doing so.
After an independent review by the Lewis Silkin legal practice, which also has offices in Dublin and Belfast, Torode was told that his contract with the BBC would not be renewed. The Silkin team upheld 45 allegations against Wallace including claims of inappropriate sexual language and one incident of unwelcome physical contact over a 17-year-timeline.
The decision on whether to air this latest series featuring the two sacked presenters has been fraught. It has been on hold since the accusations emerged with the BBC deciding it should go ahead after most of the contestants supported its broadcast.
John Torode and Gregg Wallace. The decision on whether to air the already-recorded latest series of MasterChef featuring the two sacked presenters has been fraught. File picture: PA/BBC/Shine TV
Most, but not all. One participant wanted the whole show canned, and has now been edited out of the final version.
'For me, it's about the enabling environment,' she said. 'It's that complicity. Those individual powerful men do not [act] in isolation. There is an enabling environment, turning a blind eye ... it's about years of these institutions not being accountable.'
Sincere though these expressions are, based on the evidence this seems extreme. All potential viewers have the sanction of the on-off button. How many use it is likely to determine whether we get to see the Celebrity MasterChef series and the Christmas special.
Wallace looks to be a serious loser. His access to international networks is being replaced by his reported plan to launch a private chat room (€13.50 a month) for men over the age of 50.
'Real talk, real support — hosted by Gregg Wallace. Fitness, food, lifestyle, laughs. Sign up below and pop in to say hello' — says the blurb.
It sounds a more measured approach than one of his responses to complaints made against him. On that occasion, ignoring the dictum that, when you are in a hole, you should stop digging, he hit out at 'middle class women of a certain age'.
Perhaps this is a lesson learned. Perhaps chippy masculinity will come back into fashion. But that is probably not the way to bet.