Met to use live facial recognition cameras to target violent criminals
‘Live facial recognition is doing through technology what officers have been doing since policing began’
LIVE facial recognition technology is to be rolled out across London to target serious violent criminals, Scotland Yard has announced.
Cameras will regularly be positioned at designated locations around the capital to scan crowds and check against a watchlist of wanted suspects.
The Metropolitan Police’s decision follows a High Court ruling last year that rejected a challenge against South
Wales Police’s use of the technology. Privacy campaigners described the introduction of the technology as a “stain” on the Government’s human rights record and a massive expansion of the surveillance state.
Silkie Carlo, from Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties group, said: “This is a breathtaking assault on our rights and we will challenge it, including by urgently considering next steps in our ongoing legal claim against the Met and the Home Secretary. This move instantly stains the new Government’s
human rights record and we urge an immediate reconsideration.”
The Met’s Asst Commissioner Nick Ephgrave said the technology was a “fantastic crime fighting tool” that would help the police track dangerous criminals at a time when violence and homicide in London are at record levels. He said the public would be informed where and when the technology was being used and insisted images of innocent people would not be stored.
The system works by scanning the faces of people in public places and checking them against a “bespoke” list of wanted suspects. Officers on the ground get an alert that the person identified is a subject of interest.
Deployments will be intelligence led and will focus on high-crime areas that wanted people are known to frequent. Mr Ephgrave said: “Live facial recognition is only doing through technology what officers have been doing since policing began. Every morning we brief officers and show them photographs of people wanted for serious crimes and we ask them to remember those faces and if they see them out on patrol arrest them. This technology makes that more effective. Live facial recognition does not make any decisions, it just alerts an officer.”
Mr Ephgrave said that while the technology was not a “silver bullet” to solve all violent crime it was a useful tool. He said it might also help find missing vulnerable people.
“We all want to live and work in a city which is safe: the public rightly expect us to use widely available technology to stop criminals,” said Mr Ephgrave. “Equally I have to be sure that we have the right safeguards and transparency in place to ensure we protect people’s privacy and human rights. I believe our careful and considered deployment of live facial recognition strikes that balance.”