Police use of face scanning tech stokes privacy fears
LONDON — London’s police department said Friday that it would begin using facial recognition technology to identify people on the street in real time with video cameras, adopting a level of surveillance that is rare outside of China.
The decision is a major development in the use of a technology that has set off a worldwide debate about the balance between security and privacy. Police departments contend the software gives them a technological edge to catch criminals that may otherwise avoid detection. Critics say the technology is an invasion of privacy and is being rolled out without adequate public discussion.
Britain has been at the forefront of the debate. In a country where CCTV cameras line the streets, police surveillance has traditionally been more accepted than in other Western countries.
The technology that London plans to deploy goes beyond many of the facial recognition systems used elsewhere, which match a photo against a database to identify a person. The new systems, created by the company NEC, attempt to identify people on a police watch list in real time with security cameras, giving officers a chance to stop them in the specific location.
Under pressure to address rising crime, the Metropolitan Police said the technology would help quickly identify and apprehend suspects and help “tackle serious crime, including serious violence, gun and knife crime, child sexual exploitation and help protect the vulnerable.”
“Every day, our police officers are briefed about suspects they should look out for,” Nick Ephgrave, assistant commissioner of the police department, said in the statement. Live facial recognition, he said, “improves the effectiveness of this tact.”
Already widespread in China, facial recognition is gaining traction in Western countries. An investigation by the New
York Times this month found that more than 600 law enforcement agencies are using a facial recognition system by the company Clearview AI. According to researchers at Georgetown University, cities including New York, Chicago, Detroit and Washington have at least piloted the use of the realtime systems.
Use of the facial recognition technology has generated a backlash. San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley, along with Somerville and Brookline in Massachusetts, have banned its use.
Privacy groups immediately criticized London’s decision and vowed to take legal action.
“This decision represents an enormous expansion of the surveillance state and a serious threat to civil liberties in the U.K.,” said Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, a London group that has been fighting the use of facial recognition. “We will challenge it.”