The threat of workers being replaced by technology is a spectre looming over many industries, with seemingly daily reports that everyone from teachers to coders could one day soon be replaced by an algorithm.
It seems even Met Police officers aren’t safe, as today the force announced swathes of job cuts, while simultaneously doubling its investment in live facial recognition technology.
Instead of bobbies on the beat who know their local area and have grafted to build trust with the communities who live there, Londoners will be faced with a camera and an algorithm. Live facial recognition cameras scan every passer-by, treating them as potential criminals who must be subjected to a police biometric identity check as they walk down their high streets.
The police officers still employed by the Met will increasingly be relegated to standing around facial recognition vans, waiting for the technology to alert them when potential criminals approach. Proactive policing, knocking on doors and chasing leads could become a thing of the past.
Worst still, facial recognition cameras can make mistakes. And mistakes made in the world of policing and criminal justice can be catastrophic. Big Brother Watch is supporting Shaun Thompson, an anti-knife crime community volunteer, in a landmark legal challenge after he was wrongly flagged as a criminal by the technology, surrounded by officers outside London Bridge Station and detained until he could prove he wasn’t who the technology said he was.
The reversal of the presumption of innocence, a founding principle of British justice, has chilling echoes of the Horizon scandal, where countless lives were ruined after people trusted a computer’s decision over a human being.
Policing resources are threadbare in London. With many serious crimes not even being investigated, spending millions of pounds on rights-abusing technology is an insult to Londoners. Papering over the cracks of broken policing with Orwellian technology is not a serious or sustainable solution.
To make matters worse, facial recognition technology remains virtually unregulated in the UK. While other democracies are banning or heavily restricting their use in the public and private sectors, the UK stands virtually alone in its permissive approach.
Neither the public nor parliament has ever been consulted, let alone voted on its use. Not a single law mentions the words ‘facial recognition’. Yet its rapid rollout continues across London, while the government shows little sign of reining it in.
The expansion of facial recognition technology comes at a serious cost to taxpayers, to stretched policing resources and our civil liberties. Unless the government wants the future of policing to be job cuts, mass biometric surveillance and innocent Londoners being branded as criminals by algorithms, they must step in and stop this unfettered use of live facial recognition technology.
– Madeleine Stone, Senior Advocacy Officer
LBC – When cameras take over policing, innocent people pay the price