Gardai could be given access to facial recognition technology, under plans to be unveiled by the Justice Minister today.
Helen McEntee will tell the Garda Representative Association conference she intends to legislate for it with Cabinet approval.
She'll tell delegates it would be for tackling serious crimes, and used in limited circumstances like searching CCTV footage.
However Liam Herrick from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties says it's a concerning development:
"Inherently, facial recognition technology, just like other types of biometric surveillance tools, enable mass surveillance of the whole population, and always seem to lead to discrimination and targeting of certain sections of the population.
"We have seen in the United States and elsewhere, the huge problems that have flowed from that.
"So we've heard claims of this type from other governments, and they haven't been they haven't been lived up to."
