The San Diego Police Department have hit out at a New York Times report on their officers use of facial recognition technology, saying its allegations of privacy violations are false.In the article, the newspaper alleges that the San Diego Police are using the technology without any clear guidelines.Officers have been using devices such as tablets to take a pictures of suspects instead of fingerprinting them.”Misuse is common”, the newspaper reports unamed police staff as saying.”I get a call about facial recognition maybe twice a month,” Victor Manuel Torres, a San Diego civil rights lawyer tells the NYT. “The complaint is always that they did it and didn't get permission. 'The police put me in cuffs and I'm on the curb, and they pull out an iPad and are taking pictures.' “But police say that such allegations are erroneous.The department said it only uses it for identification purposes, but the NY Times article claimed that officers in the department might be storing your information, even if there is no criminal history.”We use the picture that we take and match it up with existing booking photos from the sheriff's department. There's no other database, as the NY Times claimed we had a vast database that we're building. That's completely incorrect. We use existing booking photos only. If you've never been arrested in San Diego county, then you're not going to show up in the facial recognition database,” said Lt. Scott Wahl of the San Diego Police Department to KUSI News.Lieutenant Wahl also said all 89 officers who are using this technology have been properly trained and so far have received no complaints about this technology, until this article.

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