Western Australia (WA) Police have released results from Australia's first live facial recognition trial, which has been running since June 2026 across metropolitan and regional areas. Over the course of the trial, more than 900,000 faces were scanned, producing 209 alerts, 79 arrests, and the identification of 114 registered sex offenders — though eight incorrect matches were also recorded. While authorities have presented the figures as evidence of success, experts warn the numbers obscure deeper ethical concerns around privacy, demographic bias, and accountability, with the police commissioner himself acknowledging that darker skin tones and lighting conditions contributed to some of the errors. Analysts argue that a true measure of the system's ethical worth lies not in its aggregate results but in how it protects those wrongly caught up in its errors — a lesson underscored by a separate AI road-safety camera controversy in WA, where hundreds of fines were dropped after drivers found the appeals process unworkable.