Met police to deploy live facial recognition in London
Rollout comes despite widespread calls to pause use of controversial technology
London’s Metropolitan Police Service has announced that it will deploy live facial recognition to identify citizens across the capital, flying in the face of calls from the British government, regulators and citizens to pause use of the highly invasive and often inaccurate biometric technology.
The Met said that standalone cameras would scan passers-by in specific areas of the city for five to six hours at a time, searching for people suspected of serious and violent crimes such as gun and knife attacks and child sexual exploitation.
The Met police’s decision comes after an independent review it commissioned last year published a damning report about the force’s trial deployments in the British capital, saying the technology was only accurate 19 per cent of the time, and was likely to contravene human rights.
“We are using a tried-and-tested technology, and have taken a considered and transparent approach in order to arrive at this point,” said Assistant Commissioner Nick Ephgrave. “Similar technology is already widely used across the UK, in the private sector. Ours has been trialled by our technology teams for use in an operational policing environment.”
In October, the UK’s data protection watchdog — the only body with current legal oversight of this deployment — urged the police to hold back its use of live facial recognition in public places, until the government provided new legal guidance for the technology.
“I must ensure that everyone working in this developing area stops to take a breath and works to satisfy the full rigour of UK data protection law,” said Elizabeth Denham, the UK’s information commissioner, in October. “Moving too quickly to deploy technologies that can be overly invasive in people’s lawful daily lives risks damaging trust . . . in the fundamental model of policing by consent.”
So far, the Met has only trialled the technology, which was built by Japanese company NEC, rather than deploying it in a live policing context. Its use of facial recognition was challenged in the High Court in September, and although the courts ruled in favour of the police, an appeal against the decision will be heard on June 23 this year.
In the past few months, several other organisations including advocacy groups such as Liberty and Big Brother Watch have called for a moratorium on the use of facial recognition in the UK until regulations can be established. Last week, it emerged that the European Commission was considering imposing a temporary ban on the technology in public places for up to five years, while the regulatory landscape is drawn.
Siân Berry, the London Assembly member and Green party mayoral candidate who has pushed back directly on the police’s use of the technology, said: “I was given assurance by the deputy mayor and commissioner it would not be deployed unless ethical and legal barriers could be overcome. It appears the Met intends to ignore these promises and proceed with yet another deeply concerning infringement of our basic civil liberties.”
Among the biggest concerns about facial recognition technology is that it is inaccurate and biased against women and people of colour. The independent review of the Met’s technology showed that “it only worked correctly eight out of 42 times when individuals were flagged by the system”, said Pete Fussey, a criminologist at the University of Essex who authored the review.
Critics are concerned that none of the issues raised in the review have yet been resolved.
“How are they mitigating the technology’s bias in age, gender and ethnicity? No facial recognition algorithm has equal performance across all those categories,” said Mr Fussey.
“And finally, there is a chorus of people, from the UK government, to the data protection regulator and the EU fundamental rights agency who are challenging its use, and saying there is insufficient regulation and oversight. I would say they don’t have the authority to roll this out,” he added.
The Information Commissioner’s Office said: “We have received assurances from the MPS that it is considering the impact of this technology and is taking steps to reduce intrusion and comply with the requirements of data protection legislation.”