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Massachusetts Police Departments to Use Facial Recognition Solution

A collaboration of Massachusetts's cities has awarded a contract to Viisage Technology to implement its facial recognition solution.

MASSACHUSETTS - The Massachusetts Cities Collaborative, a group of law enforcement agencies in the area, will deploy facial recognition technology to help identify known terrorists and drug dealers and monitor gang activity.

The group awarded a $1 million contract to Viisage Technology to implement its FaceEXPLORER face recognition solution to help the police departments during the investigative and booking processes. The contract was awarded by the New Bedford Massachusetts Police Department, representing the group that included police departments in Auburn, Brockton, Fall River, Fitchburg and Littleton.

The solution will network image databases between the participating cities, allowing law enforcement to share information in real time. The project will include the design, development and implementation of a networked, state-of-the-art, scalable face recognition image capture system to meet the operational needs of the multiple law enforcement agencies. The system will be patterned after similar systems from Viisage already in use independently by the Auburn, Police Department and the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office in Florida.

The effort to deploy facial recognition software received strong support from Congress last year from the Massachusetts delegation led by Sen. Ted Kennedy. The result was a $1million appropriation to the state's police departments.