Dozens of Edmonton police officers patrolled the city’s streets in December equipped with body cameras that used artificial intelligence to scan faces, looking for what the police have deemed “high-risk offenders.”
Documents and emails obtained by CBC News offer new insight into the Edmonton Police Service’s trial of bodycam facial recognition technology — the first police agency in Canada to do so.
The AI-powered facial recognition software was trained to detect the faces of about 7,000 people on a watchlist, based on mugshots of people police say have serious criminal warrants or are flagged as potential safety risks.
Key details from the documents include:
- The privacy assessment submitted to Alberta’s privacy watchdog by EPS includes wording that experts told CBC could open the possibility of sharing sensitive information;
- A “critical fault” system outage prevented matches for several days and may have extended the pilot project;
- The facial recognition model was supplied by Corsight AI, an Israeli company whose technology has reportedly been used for mass surveillance in Gaza.
CBC News submitted access to information requests for information on the project in December, following EPS’s initial announcement, which left unanswered questions such as the timeline of when the police service submitted its privacy assessment,
EPS has declined multiple times to answer questions from CBC News regarding the facial recognition project, including specific questions about these documents.
Researchers who spoke to CBC News say the project and the use of facial recognition raises privacy concerns.
“As someone who has been studying algorithmic policing technologies for nearly a decade, and [previously] a lawyer in Canada’s justice system, I have to say that this is likely the most high risk algorithmic surveillance program that I have observed to date in Canada,” said Kate Robertson, a senior research associate with the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.
In a statement, Edmonton police commission chair Ben Henderson said the oversight body had no concerns with the pilot and the commission followed its standard process for assessing new technology.
“The commission reviewed the proposal for this project in September 2025 and raised no objections as it was proof of concept testing only and its purpose was to collect data for further assessment,” wrote Henderson.
How it works
Police in Alberta are required to wear bodycams. EPS policy is to only start recording when the officer presses a button during “investigative or enforcement related activities.”
Likewise, the facial recognition feature would not function unless recording was manually started, nor would it work in poor lighting or if a person is more than four metres away.
The privacy assessment submitted by EPS to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) and obtained by CBC News provides new insight on EPS’s safeguards and legal justification for the project.
An assessment is a legally-required document that maps the flow of information for a proposal, along with potential privacy and security risks, according to the OIPC.
The assessment from EPS states the limitations from lighting and distance “further minimizes bystanders from the automated identification of unrelated people.”
EPS submitted its privacy assessment when it announced the project, but privacy commissioner Diane McLeod was critical of EPS at the time for launching the program without waiting for a review. EPS maintained it was not required to do so.
A spokesperson for the OIPC told CBC News in March that “our office is still working with EPS regarding this [privacy assessment],” and declined further comment.
The facial recognition-enabled body cameras were manufactured by Axon, a U.S.-based company that develops and supplies weapons and technology products for military, law enforcement and civilians.
Under the pilot, if the AI found a potential match against a watchlist it would be sent for review by EPS officers trained in facial recognition.
During the first phase, front-line officers would not be notified even if the human review supported a match. A potential second phase would see officers receive near real-time notifications following human review.
‘Proactive surveillance’
In the privacy assessment, EPS notes that automated facial recognition is a “significant adaptation” of the bodycam technology, creating a “more sensitive category of use of personal information.
“The continuous scanning of faces for comparison against a watchlist constitutes proactive surveillance.”
Images of people who were recorded but not matched “will be purged after the conclusion of the proof of concept,” EPS wrote in the assessment.
The Edmonton Police Service says it will become the first police force in the world to use an artificial intelligence product from Axon Enterprise to trial facial-recognition-enabled bodycams. When the cameras record, facial recognition runs automatically in “silent mode,” without alerting officers. Afterward, trained EPS staff review the footage to see if the software worked and whether any matches were made.
EPS also notes that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms limits the collection of biometric data, and that Charter compliance is “required in order for law enforcement actions to be valid.”
EPS believes that the project “can be crafted and framed in a way that may be legally viable,” according to the assessment, through design features such as “the exhaustion of less-intrusive alternatives” and stringent protocol for use.
Robertson, whose research focuses on the intersection of law, policy and technology, questioned the legal foundation for the project.
“There is no legal authority that would justify doing what the Edmonton Police Service is proposing to do in this program,” she said.
Commission chair Henderson, a former four-term city councillor, disagrees.
“It’s the commission’s understanding that the use of facial recognition software complies with EPS’s privacy policies, privacy legislation, and provincial standards,” wrote Henderson.
Corsight
While Axon manufactures the body-worn cameras used by EPS, the company does not provide the facial recognition model used in the pilot.
According to an EPS email summarizing the project, “Corsight AI is the vendor that Axon has partnered with for the [proof of concept], their model will be doing the initial comparison of faces.”
In 2024, the New York Times reported that Israel had deployed mass surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza that relied in part on Corsight’s facial recognition technology.
CBC News has not independently confirmed the Times’ reporting, but Gideon Christian, an associate professor of AI and law at the University of Calgary, finds those reports troubling.
“I think the track record of who is providing the technology matters,” he said.
Data shared with Axon will be anonymized “whenever possible,” according to the EPS privacy assessment.
“However, data required to aid in assessing the success or failures associated with the technology will be shared when / if required.”
Christian expressed concern that the qualified language appeared to leave open the possibility of sharing sensitive information with Axon under certain circumstances.
“‘Whenever possible’ is a very loose and ambiguous phrase,” said Christian.
“These are definitely not the kinds of qualifications I would love to see, especially when it comes to sharing of sensitive information collected by a law enforcement agency.”
Axon directed project-specific questions to EPS, but said in a statement that its customers “retain full ownership and control of their data, which is protected through encryption in transit and at rest, strict access controls, audit logging, and agency-defined retention policies.”
Controversial technology
The idea of AI-driven facial recognition on police bodycams is controversial, Christian said.
The RCMP’s website states that its policy “specifically forbids” the use of such technology.
“Instead of [a] police body-worn camera… watching the police for the public, you now have that camera being retrofitted to watch the public on behalf of the police,” he said.
“I think that is very concerning reversal of the purpose of that tool.”
In 2019, Axon’s AI ethics board said that its use could not be ethically justified given the state of the technology at the time, emphasizing in a report that it had unequal performance “across races, ethnicities, genders and other identity groups.”
But at the December announcement, an Axon representative said the technology has improved since the 2019 ethics board report.
EPS said at the announcement that AI would not be taking over police work — a point reiterated in the privacy assessment, which notes that a resemblance notification does not provide an officer with “the reasonable and probable grounds to believe that the person” is arrestable or poses a risk, and that officers must still do “their due diligence.”
ATI request handling
After CBC News filed an access to information (ATI) request for emails regarding facial recognition with body-worn cameras, EPS inadvertently released on Feb. 2 an unredacted version of the records to CBC News. CBC News declined a request by EPS to immediately delete the records.
EPS did not answer a question about how the error occurred. EPS public affairs director Lauren Wozny wrote in a statement that the disclosure “didn’t constitute a privacy incident but did contain other sensitive information that would have been within our statutory authority to disclose.”
CBC News also sent several questions to EPS seeking clarification or comment about specific details of the privacy assessment, EPS emails or aspects of the project. EPS did not address those questions, including:
- why EPS did not allow time for the OIPC to review its privacy assessment before starting the pilot;
- when data might be shared with Axon;
- what training is involved for officers reviewing matches, and who provides it;
- whether any AI models are trained using images or data collected by EPS.
In response to the initial list of questions from CBC News, EPS said in a statement that the police agency fulfilled its statutory obligations when it submitted the privacy assessment to the OIPC, and has since met with officials to discuss it. “As we’ve said previously, evaluating and mitigating privacy impacts is an important ongoing part of our proof of concept.”
The statement also addressed CBC’s access to information request.
“We’ve provided clear, factual information throughout this process and engaged in good faith,” wrote Wozny in a statement.
“It’s disappointing that, despite this, CBC appears unwilling to reflect on its own ethical responsibilities while continuing to suggest impropriety on EPS’ part.
“Should you have specific, fact‑based questions that require clarification, we’re prepared to respond. Otherwise, we trust that when you proceed with your story, our position will be represented accurately and in full context.”
When asked, Wozny declined to clarify the statement or address follow-up questions and said the EPS would not provide anything more.
CBC News did not share the unredacted documents with outside parties.
What’s next
While the first phase of the project was supposed to wrap at the end of December, it may have been extended.
An EPS briefing note submitted to Chief Warren Driechel and dated Dec. 30, 2025, requests an extension of three weeks due to a system outage caused by a “critical fault,” preventing matches for seven days. The extension was sought to provide enough data for “a meaningful final evaluation to support a go/no-go decision to move to a second phase… that would involve officer notifications.”
It is not clear whether Driechel approved the request. EPS did not answer questions about the document.
The Edmonton police commission and EPS leadership will review the results of the first phase of the trial before deciding on its future use.
Henderson said the commission received a verbal update about the project in January but has made no decisions while awaiting EPS’s report on the first phase.
