Abstract

The police’s use of facial recognition technologies allows them to verify identification in real-time by mapping facial features into indicators that can be compared with other data stored in its database or in online social networks. Advances in facial recognition technologies have changed law enforcement agencies’ operations, improving their ability to identify suspects, investigate crimes, and deter criminal behavior. Most applications are used in tracking and identifying potential terrorists, searching for abducted and missing persons, and security surveillance at airports, national borders, and large public gatherings. However, for facial recognition technologies to fulfill their potential, they must not only be adopted by the police, but the public must also support their routine use. Using a secondary data analysis of a public opinion survey conducted by the Pew Research Center among a representative sample of US residents (N = 5307), we investigated the factors associated with the public`s expectations about the positive and negative outcomes of the police’s adoption of facial recognition technologies. Our results show that public attitudes to FRT are balanced, indicating awareness of the public for potential advantages, but also disadvantages of police adoption of FRT. Privacy considerations and familiarity with the technology were found to be critical for the explanation of public attitudes expressing both positive and negative expectations from the police adoption of facial recognition technology. Our study contributes to the understanding of the factors associated with public attitudes police’s use of facial recognition technologies.