The chair of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) visited London on a fact-finding mission last month to see how live facial recognition (LFR) technology had been deployed by the Metropolitan police.
The use of this tech in London is currently subject to a court challenge brought by Londoner Shaun Thompson and civil liberties group Big Brother Watch’s director Silkie Carlo over fears it opens the door to “mass surveillance” and breaches human rights laws.
Jasleen Chaggar, legal and policy officer at civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, said:
“It beggars belief that the Met Police – who are currently fighting a legal challenge against their use of live facial recognition – are encouraging Police Scotland to follow their Orwellian practices like lemmings off a cliff.
“To suggest that the public should be willing to accept live facial recognition misidentifying 10 innocent members of the public, who could then be detained and questioned by the police, is alarming – particularly when 80 per cent of those wrongly identified were black people.
“With almost half of Scots uncomfortable with the rollout of LFR, Police Scotland must abandon any plans to introduce these intrusive, suspicionless, biometric identity checks on the streets of Scotland.”
The National – Facial recognition should not be introduced without Holyrood sign off