UK government has launched a £20 million ($25 million) competition for tech companies to provide live facial recognition to a number of police forces.
The procurement marks another step in the UK's plans to introduce the controversial technology into policing and security services.
Via BlueLight Commercial, a non-profit commercial consortium representing police and other emergency services, the government has issued a tender notice to establish a national multi-supplier framework for the provision of live facial recognition (LFR) software. Commercial frameworks aim to ease the buying process and lower costs across a pre-agreed set of suppliers. However, there are no guarantees public sector organizations will spend a specific value using the mechanism.
"The scope of the framework is for LFR software ... which compares a live camera feed (or multiple feeds) of faces against predetermined watchlists, to locate persons of interest by generating an alert when a possible match is found," the procurement notice explained this week. The maximum value of the framework is set at £20 million for the four-year duration of the agreement.