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AI-Assisted Surveillance Video Search and Face Matching

Safety & Security · Enforcement

What it collects that can identify you

Biometric
Identifiable data
  • Faces and body imagery captured in lawfully obtained surveillance video recordings. The system processes facial imagery to enable face matching across footage.

Also collects about a place and about behaviour, which is anonymized data.

Run by
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)
Where
No fixed location
Kept
Not stated by the Helpful Places.
Shared with
Accountable organization
Your copy
You cannot see the data it holds about you. What you can do

What it is for

Safety & SecurityEnforcement

This system helps RCMP investigators search through lawfully obtained surveillance video by automatically detecting vehicles, people, and movement. It can also match a face of interest across footage — though it does not link faces to any identity database and cannot directly identify individuals. Members of the public may be captured in video recordings that are reviewed using this tool.

What it collects and what happens to it

Data taken in

Biometric
Identifiable data
  • Faces and body imagery captured in lawfully obtained surveillance video recordings. The system processes facial imagery to enable face matching across footage.
About a place
Anonymized data
  • Surveillance video captures physical locations and movement paths within the scene. Spatial and scene context is extracted to support movement analysis within the footage.
About behaviour
Anonymized data
  • Movement patterns, paths, and activity of persons and vehicles captured in surveillance video are processed to support searches for specific behaviours or events.

Processing

Computer Vision
  • Advanced video analytics using computer vision to detect and track objects, persons, and vehicles across surveillance footage. Includes motion analysis and scene interpretation.
Biometric Recognition
  • Face Matching — a form of facial recognition — is used to find occurrences of a given face across video footage. The system does not connect to external identity databases and cannot directly identify a person; it only matches a provided face template against faces in the video.

What it does

Sensing (Perceptive AI)
Human decides
  • The system senses and structures raw video frames — detecting objects, people, vehicles, faces, and licence plates from surveillance footage, converting raw video into structured detections for investigator review.
Deciding (Analytical AI)
Human decides
  • The system scores and ranks video frames by similarity to a query face or vehicle, presenting investigators with ranked results. All decisions — including whether a match is relevant — are made by a human investigator.

Outputs

A recommendation or prediction
Anonymized data
  • The system returns ranked lists of video timestamps and frames matching the query (a face, vehicle, or behaviour), presented as candidate results for investigator review — not as binding determinations of identity or guilt.
About behaviour
Anonymized data
  • The system produces summaries and highlights of movement and activity within video recordings, allowing rapid review of lengthy footage to locate relevant events.

Run by

Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)
  • The RCMP deploys Briefcam to assist investigators in reviewing lawfully obtained surveillance video recordings for law-enforcement purposes.

Government of Canada AI Register — Briefcam

Built by

Milestone Systems
  • Milestone Systems A/S is the vendor that developed and supplies the Briefcam video analytics platform, including its object detection, face matching, and automated licence plate recognition capabilities.

Government of Canada AI Register — Briefcam

Kept for

Not stated by the Helpful Places.

Shared with

Available to the accountable organization
  • Outputs (video search results, face match candidates, ALPR results) are available to RCMP investigators (GC employees) who are the primary users of the system.
Not available to me
  • Members of the public cannot access the video search results, face match results, or any outputs generated about them by this system. There is no public-facing access mechanism described in the register entry.

Stored

Not stated by the Helpful Places.

How to read the colours

Can it identify you?

Anonymized data
Data about people with the link to who is broken. Stripped of identifiers, blurred, aggregated, or noised so this system can’t reasonably tie a record back to an individual.
Pseudonymous data
Each person’s data is tied to a token (hash, ID, template) that lets this system recognise the same person across events, but the token itself doesn’t reveal a name. Reidentification is possible with extra information.
Identifiable data
The data either contains a direct identifier (name, address, account name, recognisable face or voice, plate number) or carries a token this system uses to look up legal identity during processing.

Who completes the loop?

Human decides
This mode suggests; a person decides what to do next. The AI is always advisory — a human is in the loop on every decision. Example: a triage tool ranks cases for a clinician who chooses which to see first.
Human executes
This mode decides; a person carries out the result. Example: an optimizer plans the day’s trash-collection routes, and drivers run them.
Autonomous
This mode decides and acts on its own. No person reviews each decision or carries out the resulting action.

Definitions from the DTPR standard. Amber is about your data, violet about who decides. The fuller the shape and the deeper the colour, the more identifying the data or the less a person is involved.

What you can do

Ask about this system

Questions go to the Helpful Places, not the vendor.

Your rights

  • Right to Be Informed of AI UseAI use is disclosed to users per the Government of Canada AI Register. Members of the public subject to investigations using this tool may not receive individual notice that their video was processed by an AI system; the register entry records that AI use is disclosed at the program level.
  • Right to Algorithmic TransparencyThe RCMP has published information about Briefcam in the Government of Canada's AI and Algorithmic Systems Register, including its capabilities (advanced video analytics, face matching, ALPR) and limitations (no connection to external identity databases). Members of the public may consult this register for general information about how the system works.

Risks and safeguards

  • Civil liberties harmUse of facial recognition and automated video analytics in law enforcement may chill freedom of movement and assembly, enable mass surveillance beyond the stated evidentiary purpose, and could disproportionately affect racialized communities given known biases in face recognition systems.Safeguard: The system is restricted to lawfully obtained video; face matching requires a probe face and does not connect to external identity databases. Use is limited to GC employees (investigators). AI use is disclosed to users per the register. However, no independent audit, bias assessment, or public oversight mechanism is described in the source material.
  • Reputational harmMisidentification through face matching could link an innocent person to a crime scene, causing serious reputational harm.Safeguard: The system explicitly cannot directly identify a person as it does not connect to any external identification databases; all matches are advisory outputs reviewed by a human investigator before any action is taken. However, the source material does not describe accuracy thresholds, false-positive rates, or mandatory human-review protocols.