Privacy campaigners pour cold water on London cops 1k facial recognition arrests

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Privacy activists are unimpressed with London's Metropolitan Police and its use of live facial recognition (LFR) to catch criminals, saying it is not effective use of taxpayer money and an overreach by government.

The Met released data on Friday that it hoped would imbue a sense of confidence in the controversial privacy busting technology, with the force's LFR chief saying it improves efficiency.

Never ones to pass up an opportunity to bash LFR, campaign group Big Brother Watch (BBW) argued the numbers don't truly reflect the message that police are better off with what it calls "Orwellian tech."

According to the raw data published by the Met, London's police made 715,296 arrests in total since 2020. 1,035 of these were made with the support of LFR, and 773 led to charges or police cautions.

BBW said this represents just a small percentage of the total, arguing that the return on investment in the technology, trials for which began in 2016, hasn't been as fruitful as intended.

"Arrests made with the technology represent just 0.15 percent of all arrests made in the capital during that time, despite significant police resources being plowed into its expansion," the campaign group said.

"Policing resources are threadbare in London, and with many serious crimes not even being investigated, spending millions of pounds on rights-abusing technology is an insult to Londoners. The expansion of facial recognition technology comes at a serious cost to the taxpayer, to our civil liberties, and to stretched policing resources."

For context, BBW's calculations were based on data going back to 2020, and London's police only released LFR arrest figures from the start of 2024.

Since then, LFR arrests account for 0.57 percent of the total 180,947. So, not a great deal better but considerably more compared to the way BBW framed it.

Met LFR chief Lindsey Chiswick last week lauded the initiative's results.

"Live facial recognition is a powerful tool, which is helping us deliver justice for victims, including those who have been subjected to horrendous offences, such as rape and serious assault," she said.

"It is not only saving our officers' valuable time but delivering faster, more accurate results to catch criminals – helping us be more efficient than ever before."

The Met added that LFR interventions don't always lead to arrests. Sometimes they help inform officers of offenders' conditions being breached, such as registered sex offenders and convicted stalkers, describing them as "crucial."

One such example is the case of David Cheneler, 73, a registered sex offender caught by LFR cameras in a police van parked in Denmark Hill.

With Cheneler's face added to the LFR database, cameras spotted him and officers investigated since he had a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO), which prohibited him from being alone with a child under the age of 14.

Cheneler was picked up by Met Police officers and found to be in the company of a six-year-old girl, as well as an offensive weapon.

His arrest and resultant guilty plea landed him two years in prison. He was sentenced on May 20.

UK facial recognition grows ever-pervasive

Facial recognition technology is often associated with authoritarian states, particularly China, which uses it for mass surveillance of its citizens, and that's the common example privacy campaigners like to use when arguing against its use in the UK and other democracies.

However, deployment shows no signs of slowing down, and based on recent events it appears to be at the heart of the UK's policing strategy.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, said LFR would be at the center of the UK's response to riots that broke out across England last year, months after the Lords' Justice and Home Affairs Committee told his predecessor that it lacked a legal basis.

Indeed, there are no laws that oversee the police's use of facial recognition in the UK, and for such an intrusive technology with a controversial history, many deem the lack of oversight a significant concern.

"Facial recognition technology remains dangerously unregulated in the UK, meaning police forces are writing their own rules about how they use the technology and who they place on watchlists," said BBW.

"This is an authoritarian technology that can have life-changing consequences when it makes mistakes, yet neither the public nor parliament has ever voted on it."

The Met is not oblivious to criticism of LFR. Offering some comfort to the wary, it said cameras only scan faces and compare them to images of those on a watchlist, rather than logging the details, whereabouts, etc of anyone that passes by.

Once a match is detected, the system triggers an alert, and officers conduct further checks and decide whether to engage with the individual.

"Importantly, an alert from the system does not automatically result in an arrest – officers make a decision about whether further action is necessary following engagement," said the Met.

"The Met has also implemented robust safeguards in its use of LFR. For example, if a member of the public walks past an LFR camera and is not wanted by the police, their biometrics are immediately and permanently deleted."

The UK continues to spend big on facial recognition capabilities. Less than a year ago, it published a procurement notice worth £20 million ($27.2 million) for LFR software to be used across various police forces.

A Met Police spokesperson told The Reg: "The Met is committed to using technology to make London safer and take offenders off the streets. "Since 2024, we have arrested more than 1,000 wanted criminals who were wanted for offences such as rape and serious assault. "It is not only saving our officers' valuable time but delivering faster, more accurate results to catch criminals – helping us be more efficient than ever before."

Many cameras are deployed in vans parked on the side of roads. However, in a sign of where the technology is heading, the first permanent LFR cameras were hooked up in Croydon earlier this year.

The crime-fighting scheme followed a two-year trial and naturally drew criticism, which the Met tried to dampen by saying cameras would only be switched on when officers were in the area and capable of making arrests. ®

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