The Philippine National Police is expanding facial-recognition use to identify fugitives with possible international links and speed intelligence sharing with police agencies across Southeast Asia.
PNP chief Gen. Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. directed police units to make greater use of the technology while accelerating the submission and validation of wanted-person information through ASEANAPOL, the regional association of national police forces.
The directive follows the ASEANAPOL conference hosted by the Philippines in Manila. Police leaders endorsed modernization of the electronic ASEANAPOL Database System, known as e-ADS, as part of a longer-term program that includes wider facial-recognition use and greater forensic cooperation.
Nartatez said faster identity verification and information exchange could help authorities locate people who cross borders to avoid arrest. He pointed to regional cooperation in the arrest of fugitive Rizal Alih in Sabah and the return of wanted people from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China, although the PNP account did not say that facial recognition produced those specific outcomes.
The proposed workflow combines biometric search with shared law-enforcement records. A face image could be compared with a watchlist to generate a candidate, while e-ADS could provide member forces with the associated warrant and case information. Human review and confirmation would still be necessary because a facial-recognition result alone does not establish identity or legal grounds for arrest.
ASEANAPOL has already been planning a move from e-ADS 2.0 toward an artificial intelligence-enabled system intended to support advanced analytics and cross-border information correlation. The latest PNP directive gives facial identification a more explicit role in that regional modernization.
The announcement did not identify a facial-recognition supplier, accuracy threshold, retention policy, budget or deployment timetable. Those details will determine how images are searched, which records are available to other countries and how an incorrect candidate can be challenged.
Facial-recognition use has also been expanding within the Philippines. Davao City recently advanced a local ordinance governing police use, while a new provincial police commander has supported broader deployments for criminal identification.
Sources: Philippine News Agency, Daily Tribune, ASEANAPOL
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
