Our report, Face Off, found that UK police use of facial recognition technology is lawless, dangerous, and inaccurate, and may infringe people’s fundamental rights to privacy and freedom of expression.
Director Silkie Carlo said:
“Real-time facial recognition is a dangerously authoritarian surveillance tool that could fundamentally change policing in the UK. Members of the public could be tracked, located and identified – or misidentified – everywhere they go.
We’re seeing ordinary people being asked to produce ID to prove their innocence as police are wrongly identifying thousands of innocent citizens as criminals.
It is deeply disturbing and undemocratic that police are using a technology that is almost entirely inaccurate, that they have no legal power for, and that poses a major risk to our freedoms.
This has wasted millions in public money and the cost to our civil liberties is too high. It must be dropped.”
The Guardian – UK police use of facial recognition technology a failure, says report