Police chief calls facial recognition critics ‘ill-informed’

DAME CRESSIDA DICK has issued a passionate defence of the use of live facial recognition (LFR) technology, insisting privacy concerns are less important than preventing someone being “knifed in the chest”.

Speaking at a security conference in Whitehall, she said that those who criticised the use of the technology would need to justify their opposition to the victims of violent crime. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner accused those who attacked LFR as often being “inaccurate and highly ill-informed”.

LFR cameras work by scanning passers-by in public spaces and then checking them against a watchlist of wanted suspects. The Met claims the technology has a very low failure rate, with the system only creating a false alert one in every 1,000 times.

Speaking to delegates at the Royal United Services Institute, Dame

Cressida said trials of the technology – which was rolled out fully for the first time in London last month – had resulted in the arrest of eight people wanted for serious crimes.

She said: “Without LFR, those eight individuals, who were wanted for having caused harm, would probably not have been arrested. So I and others have been making the case for the proportionate use of tech in policing but right now the loudest voices in the debate seem to be the critics. Sometimes highly inaccurate or highly ill-informed. I would say it is for critics to justify to the victims of those crimes why police should not be allowed to use tech lawfully and proportionally to catch criminals.”

Dame Cressida went on: “Speaking as a member of the public, I will be frank. In an age of Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, concern about my image and that of my fellow law-abiding citizens passing through LFR and not being stored, feels much, much smaller than my and the public’s vital expectation to be kept safe from a knife through the chest.”

She also said Artificial Intelligence, when used properly, could be an extremely effective crime fighting tool.

“The only people who benefit from us not using [it] lawfully and proportionately are the criminals, the rapists, the terrorists and all those who want to harm you, your family and friends,” she explained.

But Silkie Carlo, from civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, said LFR was a highly controversial mass surveillance tool that risked eroding trust between the police and the public.

She said: “The commissioner is right that the loudest voices in this debate are the critics, it’s just that she’s not willing to listen to them.

“Her attempt to dismiss serious human rights concerns with life or death equations and to depict critics as ill-informed without basis only cheapens the debate.”