Security News > 2020 > June > NEC insists its face-recog training dataset isn't biased, but refuses to share details of Neoface system with UK court
Facial-recognition technology used by British police forces does not rely on trawling the internet for random face photos to use as training data, an NEC manager told the courts.
"Our biometric templates are unique to NEC and are not portable between vendors," said Paul Roberts, head of global facial recognition at NEC Global subsidiary Northgate Public Services.
NEC also refused to tell even the British courts where it obtained its facial-recognition training dataset or to give details about its makeup.
NEC's man told the court that Liberty's expert only had direct knowledge of "An older version of the Neoface algorithm SDK" that was used "For internal testing".
The force is said to have asked NEC to answer questions about where it got the training dataset from, which, as Jain pointed out, suggested the force didn't know the answer itself, making it "Difficult for SWP to confirm whether the technology is in fact biased".