There are growing suspicions that facial recognition technology is being used on police photographs of innocent young people.
Earlier this week, RNZ revealed police are approaching innocent young people, photographing them, collecting their personal details and sending it all to their national database.
Te Aniwa Hurihanganui reports.
Police released a written statement to Morning Report about the concerns detailed in the story.
Mark Evans, Deputy Chief Executive Insights and Deployment said police strongly refute claims officers are actively taking photos of Māori youth or anyone to profile offenders or train systems to identify people of Māori and pacific descent.
"The assertion that Police would undertake such a practice is contrary to our values and style of policing," he said.
"Police do not use public facing, or 'live' facial recognition technology. The NEC Facial Recognition system currently in use enables Police to compare still images of unidentified suspects, where those images have been submitted as part of an investigation. It is not used in the analysis of any livestream or live surveillance footage, and live footage cannot feed directly into the system."
"Reviews, including one by the Independent Police Conduct Authority, are currently being undertaken into the practice of photographing individuals."
