Responding to the Prime Minister’s statement on public disorder in Southport, in which he pledged a “wider deployment of facial recognition” surveillance, Silkie Carlo, Director of Big Brother Watch said:
“The Prime Minister’s alarming pledge today to roll out facial recognition in an apparent response to recent disorder is a pledge to plunder more vital police resources on mass surveillance that threatens rather than protects democracy. This AI surveillance turns members of the public into walking ID cards, is dangerously inaccurate and has no explicit legal basis in the UK. Whilst common in Russia and China, live facial recognition is banned in Europe.
“It’s deeply worrying that the Prime Minister totally failed to address the causes of the violent, racist thuggery we have witnessed in Britain this week, let alone his failure to even address the causes of the heinous knife crime that has cruelly taken so many lives. To promise the country ineffective AI surveillance in these circumstances was frankly tone deaf and will give the public absolutely no confidence that this government has the competence or conviction to get tough on the causes of these crimes and protect the public.”
ENDS.
Notes:
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Spokespeople are available for interviews – contact 07730439257 or info@bigbrotherwatch.org.uk
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Police use of live facial recognition is broadly prohibited in Europe under the AI Act, which came into force today
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73.5% of police live facial recognition “matches” to date have been false positives – i.e. they have wrongly flagged innocent members of the public as people of interest. This data is from the police’s own records which we collect – contact jake.hurfurt@bigbrotherwatch.org.uk for more information/a copy
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Big Brother Watch is currently supporting an anti-knife crime community worker in a landmark legal challenge against the Metropolitan Police’s use of live facial recognition surveillance after an innocent man was wrongly stopped and detained.