Computers Can See You — If You Have a Mug Shot

When rioters wreaked havoc on some U.K. cities last month, police deployed facial-recognition technology to try to identify some of the participants. But many experts say the software isn’t yet good enough to be of much use in interpreting grainy security footage, despite a recent study that suggested facial-recognition software is highly accurate in controlled settings.

Facial-recognition software is controversial. When Facebook Inc. began using the technology to automatically suggest tags for people in photos on the social-networking site, some users were outraged at what they viewed as a potential invasion of privacy. Some also worried about the potential for misidentifying people, especially in photos where subjects aren’t facing the camera head-on.

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