| And while the depth of that identity fraud scam has yet to be fully exposed - police are investigating facial recognition software for the more effective tracking and identification of suspects.
The Department was planning to team up with a company called Biometrica. However, the platform would require handing over copies of Belize's entire crime database, including criminal records, and fingerprint data.
And today the commissioner explained that they're putting a pause on it since they're trying to find a solution that wouldn't require giving a third party access to such sensitive data. Here's how he put it:
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"That agreement is currently on hold, there is a need for us to see how we can work it out. Perhaps if it is that they can develop a software and then we just get that software, without the exchanging of data where we can keep our data in house, then we may be able to go with it. but then even the company itself had also called us and said that they could not go through with the agreement because of some issue with the software that they had developed so they're looking to see if they can develop one that the countries, because it's not just Belize but there are many Caribbean countries that have signed onto it but we have all decided that we're not going through with it because of the issue with the software but we're hoping that when the new one comes, we are hoping that it would be one that we can use in house without having to share data to any outside entity, particularly for the facial recognition because that requires that we would have to use the database of persons who have been convicted of crime so we rather house that in house as opposed to sharing that abroad."
Courtney Menzies:
"And in the event the program cannot work unless you share the data, what happens then?"
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Then we look at other sources because there are other sources out there that do provide the software without us having to share the data."
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