We’re disappointed by today’s judgment, which finds the Metropolitan Police’s expansive use of live facial recognition to be in accordance with the law. However, the fight to protect the public’s rights from facial recognition mass surveillance is far from over. We fully support Shaun Thompson in seeking to appeal this judgment.
There are important legal questions still to be resolved about our right to privacy in the digital age.
WHY THIS MATTERS
We are on the precipice of a completely different world, where cameras act as identity checkpoints on every street corner, turning open societies into systems of constant surveillance. There has never been a more important moment to defend our rights and freedoms from dystopian tech.
The Metropolitan Police’s use of live facial recognition in London is unprecedented. Last year alone, 4.2 million people’s faces were scanned – more than in any other European capital or Western democracy.
We support the responsible use of new technology in policing, but the Met’s current approach is excessive, intrusive and risks misidentifying innocent people. With powerful surveillance tools now readily available, we urgently need laws and policies that protect the public and uphold the hard-won democratic freedoms that define Britain.
We believe the Human Rights Act can, and should, ensure meaningful safeguards on police use of live facial recognition. This legal challenge is about securing those protections.
It is clear that stronger safeguards are needed to make sure facial recognition is used only in the most serious cases – not as a routine surveillance tool affecting millions of innocent people.
We were grateful to meet the Policing Minister recently to give our views on how a new legal framework on facial recognition should work. After years of campaigning, it is encouraging that the Government will finally put a legal framework before Parliament – but alarming that they are committing to a five-fold increase in the tech at the same time.
WHAT WE’VE ACHIEVED SO FAR
This legal challenge has already driven meaningful change.
After the legal action began, the Met police committed to a “thorough and detailed” review of its live facial recognition policy and to take into account our arguments. The Commissioner accepted that parts of the previous policy were not “clearly expressed”, and could be read as allowing a “permissive approach” to facial recognition deployments.
In September 2024, the Met police introduced a new policy which limited who can be added to watchlists, removing broad categories that allowed people deemed to be at “risk of harm”, “victims” and “associates” of other people on a watchlist to be included. However, serious concerns remain.
The new policy creates a low threshold for live facial recognition to be used at any so-called “crime hotspots”, defined so broadly that it can be used across the vast majority of the city, as our expert evidence showed.
With millions of people already being scanned under this framework, there is a real risk of normalising constant identity checks through widespread camera networks – far beyond what the public would expect for such a powerful tool.
The permanent installation of facial recognition cameras in Croydon highlights how this chilling infrastructure could expand.We can also now disclose that the Met police paid Shaun Thompson a settlement in response to his claim for damages. His experience – including being wrongly stopped, detained and questioned by the police – showed the real risks members of the public face with mass facial recognition.”
SUPPORT THE APPEAL
We don’t want to become a nation of walking ID cards, where we are all treated as suspicious until proven innocent.
This legal challenge was only made possible thanks to the support of hundreds of people. If you can, please consider donating to help fund the appeal and continue this vital fight.
Background:
In May 2024, Shaun Thompson, an anti-knife crime campaigner, and Silkie Carlo, the director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, initiated a legal challenge against the Metropolitan Police’s use of live facial recognition cameras.
Mr Thompson, a 39-year-old man from London, was travelling through London Bridge, when he was wrongly flagged by the Metropolitan Police’s facial recognition cameras. He was held by officers on Borough High Street whilst they asked for identity documents, repeatedly demanded fingerprint scans, and inspected him for scars and tattoos. The police stop continued for over 20 minutes and Mr Thompson was threatened with arrest, despite providing multiple identification documents showing that he had been falsely identified by the facial recognition technology.
Mr Thompson described the police’s use of live facial recognition technology as “stop and search on steroids”.
Big Brother Watch, the campaign group supporting Mr Thompson, is leading a national campaign for strict limits on police use of facial recognition.
NOTES:
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The judgment is available here.
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Comments responding to the judgment from claimants Shaun Thompson and Silkie Carlo are available here.
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The claimants are represented by Dan Squires KC, Aidan Wills and Rosalind Comyn of Matrix Chambers. Also acting for the claimants are Jules Carey, Joseph Morgan and Emilia Pearson from Bindmans LLP. Squires and Wills acted as counsel for Dr Ed Bridges against South Wales Police in the first test case concerning police use of live facial recognition technology. The Court of Appeal found that South Wales Police’s use of the surveillance breached privacy rights as there were insufficient constraints on where it could be used and who could be put on watchlists.
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Photos of Shaun Thompson, Silkie Carlo and live facial recognition deployments are available here
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Big Brother Watch is crowdfunding to fund the appeal
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Spokespeople are available for interviews. Please send any further enquiries to info@bigbrotherwatch.org.uk or 07730439257
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More detail on Big Brother Watch’s campaign to #StopFacialRecognition is available on our website