The Home Office is announcing the roll-out of ten Live Facial Recognition (LFR) vans to seven police forces: Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Surrey and Sussex (jointly), and Thames Valley and Hampshire (jointly).
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Neighbourhood policing has been decimated over the last 15 years, but through our Plan for Change we are turning the corner, starting with town and city centres. Within the next year, we will have 3,000 new neighbourhood officers and PCSOs in place, which is a big shift. We also want them to have more powers to tackle off-road bikes, shop theft, street theft and other crimes that have blighted some of our town and city centres, so everyone can feel safe in their own town.
“And we will provide police with the tools they need to do their jobs. Facial recognition will be used in a targeted way to identify sex offenders or people wanted for the most serious crimes who the police have not been able to find. That’s why we’re funding ten vans and also drawing up a new legal framework, so we’ve got proper safeguards and checks in place so that we can use the technology to go after the most dangerous criminals.”
Lindsey Chiswick at the Met Police is the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) lead for facial recognition. She said: “The police have a duty to prevent crime and keep the public safe. Live Facial Recognition supports effective policing, enabling officers to locate suspects quickly and accurately.
“The increased access to Live Facial Recognition vehicles to forces that previously did not have the capability is an excellent opportunity for policing. Each Live Facial Recognition deployment will be targeted, intelligence-led, within a set geographical location and for defined period of time, ensuring deployments are proportionate, lawful and necessary.
“Live Facial Recognition has already been used in policing to great success, locating thousands of wanted offenders, or others breaching their bail conditions.”
BBW comment
Rebecca Vincent, Interim Director of the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: “This unprecedented escalation in the use of facial recognition technology across the UK is alarming, and represents a significant expansion of the surveillance state. Live facial recognition turns every passerby into a walking barcode and treats us all as a nation of suspects.
“Police have interpreted the absence of any legislative basis authorising the use of this intrusive technology as carte blanche to continue to roll it out unfettered, despite the fact that a crucial judicial review on the matter is pending.
“This move is not only worrying for our privacy rights, it is worrying for our democracy. The Home Office must scrap its plans to roll out further live facial recognition capacity until robust legislative safeguards are established.”
Consultation
Labour has stated the LFR is part of their ‘Safer Streets Mission’ against crime and antisocial behaviour. As for what the vans work to, the Home Office points to College of Policing guidance; and the (defunct) surveillance camera code of practice.
Comments
Dr Ilya Kolochenko, CEO at the app security firm ImmuniWeb and a Fellow at the British Computer Society (BCS) said that additional live facial recognition (LFR) police vans will quite unlikely undermine our privacy rights, while bringing more safety to the streets.
He said: “The key question here is whether and how the LFR policing may evolve in the future. For instance, what happens if individuals sought by foreign countries will also be arrested for crimes having nothing to do with the UK? What happens if various civils wrongs, like unpaid fines or parking tickets, will also be tracked via the LFR surveillance? What happens if the data will be shared with various third parties, such as AI vendors, in attempt to build LLM models that would, say, predict location of fugitives?
“Another question that one may already ask is whether locations of recognised individuals are being stored in a central database and if so what are the purpose and duration of the storage. In the future it might be difficult to find the right balance between public safety and individual privacy rights, potentially unleashing a parade of horrors in either direction.”
And Alex Laurie, SVP, Ping Identity said: “The government is taking sensible steps to address the potential misuse of facial recognition technology that’s already proven invaluable in tackling crime. The announcement that the tech’s algorithms have been independently tested, and a consultation will be held on what safeguards are needed, will go a long way to shaping a new watertight legal framework that will get the public’s backing. As legislation evolves, one of the most important factors in using facial recognition more broadly on our streets is ensuring citizens fully understand and trust how it is used.
“Transparency about when and how facial recognition is deployed, robust regulations and rigorous protection of biometric data must be prioritised. Without these measures, public distrust could undermine the programme’s effectiveness and put the UK at risk of becoming a surveillance state.”
