Britain's policing minister punts live facial recognition (LFR) tech nationwide

The government is to encourage police forces across England and Wales to adopt live facial recognition (LFR) technology, with a minister praising its use by the London's Metropolitan Police in a suburb in the south of the city.

Policing minister Sarah Jones confirmed the UK government is consulting on guidance on where, when, and how police forces can use LFR with publication due later this year. “What we’ve seen in Croydon is that it has worked,” she told a fringe event at the Labour party conference on September 29, referring to the Met’s installation of permanent LFR cameras in the town.

“We just need to make sure it’s clear what the technology is going to be useful for going forward. If we are going to use it more, if we do want to roll it out across the country, what are the parameters?” she added. “Live facial recognition is a really good tool that has led to arrests that wouldn’t have come otherwise and it’s very, very valuable.”

In August, the Home Office said that seven more police forces will start using ten new vans kitted out with LFR technology, in addition to existing use by the Metropolitan Police in London and South Wales Police. At the time it said the two forces have used LFR to make 580 arrests over the previous 12 months.

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Police forces currently use LFR in a relatively limited way, looking for matches with people on a watchlist rather than logging data on everyone who passes enabled cameras. Officers then decide whether to act on matches reported by the system, rather than automatically stopping everyone it spots. Most deployments are temporary, but in March the Metropolitan Police said it had installed two permanent cameras in Croydon following a two-year trial of van-based systems.

LFR is far from infallible and experts say it is more likely to misidentify black individuals. Police officers using LFR stopped Shaun Thompson, who was returning from volunteering with an anti-knife crime community organisation, outside London Bridge tube station in February 2024. He is taking the Metropolitan Police to judicial review with privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch.

Thompson, who is Black, told the BBC that officers held him for about 30 minutes, wanted to scan his fingerprints and threatened him with arrest, despite him providing identity showing he was not the person on the watchlist.

"I want structural change. This is not the way forward. This is like living in Minority Report," he said. “It's stop and search on steroids.” ®