Responding to the Home Secretary’s announcement that facial recognition will be rolled out across England and Wales Big Brother Watch Advocacy Manager Matthew Feeney said:
“Today’s announcement represents one of the most significant threats to civil liberties in the history of British policing. The Home Secretary announcing the costly rollout of a mass biometric surveillance technology is especially egregious at a time when the government has yet to finish an ongoing facial recognition consultation. Sadly, this latest news justifies Big Brother Watch’s long-standing concerns that police will use facial recognition as a tool for mass surveillance.
An expansion of facial recognition on this scale would be unprecedented in liberal democracies, and would represent the latest in a regrettable trend. Police across the UK have already scanned the faces of millions of innocent people who have done nothing except go about their days on high streets across the country.
We know that the watchlists police use have included victims of crime as well as witnesses and that innocent people have been misidentified. Indeed, the Metropolitan Police is facing a legal challenge this week by a community worker they wrongly stopped and questioned for half an hour due to a misidentification.
Now is not the time for the Home Secretary to subject millions of law-abiding people to a surveillance infrastructure better suited for an authoritarian state than a liberal democracy. The Home Secretary should halt the use of live facial recognition until the ongoing legal challenge and consultation are concluded.”