Privacy rights campaigners slam the Met for cutting police officers while simultaneously investing in live facial recognition cameras & doubling the number of deployments.
Madeleine Stone, Senior Advocacy Officer at Big Brother Watch told Metro that there’s no specific law governing the use of this intrusive technology. “The police have essentially been left off the leash and can do what they want with this”, she said.
This technology also puts people at risk of misidentifications and wrongful accusations. An anti-knife crime community worker Shaun Thompson was stopped on the street in London, interrogated for almost half an hour and threatened with arrest following a facial recognition misidentification by the Metropolitan Police. He is bringing a legal challenge to stop the spread of this mass surveillance technology.
Metro – Facial recognition cameras doubled in London despite ‘dystopian’ warning
Morning Star – Met Police to double its use of live facial recognition technology