Big Brother Watch has attacked controversial facial recognition surveillance and revealed that 96% of matches by the Metropolitan Police in fact wrongly identified innocent members of the public as wanted criminals.
Big Brother Watch warned that a roll out of live facial recognition would be “disastrous for policing and the future of civil liberties”.
Director of Big Brother Watch Silkie Carlo said:
“This is a turning point for civil liberties in the UK. If police push ahead with facial recognition surveillance, members of the public could be tracked across Britain’s colossal CCTV networks.
“For a nation that opposed ID cards and rejected the national DNA database, the notion of live facial recognition turning citizens into walking ID cards is chilling.
“This China-style mass surveillance tool is the very antithesis of British democratic freedom and police using it on our streets sets a dangerous example to countries around the world. It would be disastrous for policing and the future of civil liberties and we urge police to drop it for good”.
Read more:
The Times – Drop facial recognition, police told
The Independent – Facial recognition wrongly identifies public as potential criminals 96% of time, figures reveal
i – Met police’s facial recognition technology ‘96% inaccurate’
The Register – UK is ‘not a surveillance state’ insists minister defending police face recog tech