Big Brother Watch and other leading rights and racial justice groups have written to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, calling for him to reverse the decision to deploy Live Facial Recognition technology at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival.
The letter, which was also sent to London’s Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime Kaya Comer-Schwartz, was signed by Big Brother Watch, Human Rights Watch, Liberty, The Runnymede Trust, Race on the Agenda, Privacy International, Statewatch, Open Rights Group, Stop Watch, Race Equality First and Access Now.
The organisations claim that the technology is “a mass surveillance tool that treats all Carnival-goers as potential suspects” and states that this decision “will only exacerbate concerns about abuses of state power and racial discrimination within your force”.