Responding to the Metropolitan Police’s 2025 live facial recognition report, Big Brother Watch Legal & Policy Officer Jasleen Chaggar said:
“It is alarming that over 3 million people have been scanned with police facial recognition cameras in the past year in London alone. Live facial recognition is a mass surveillance tool that risks making London feel like an open prison, and the prospect of the Met expanding facial recognition even more across the city is disproportionate and chilling.
Far from police using these cameras to find serious wanted criminals, the Met’s report shows that the majority of people flagged by facial recognition were not wanted for arrest.
It’s disturbing that 80% of the innocent people wrongly flagged by facial recognition were black. We all want police to have the tools they need to cut crime but this is an Orwellian and authoritarian technology that treats millions of innocent people like suspects and risks serious injustice.
No law in this country has ever been passed to govern live facial recognition and given the breathtaking risk to the public’s privacy, it is long overdue that the Government stops its use to account for its serious risks.”
ENDS
NOTES
- 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 he was wrongly stopped and detained
- Spokespeople are available for interview. Please direct enquiries or requests for interviews to info@bigbrotherwatch.org.uk or 07730439257
- More detail on Big Brother Watch’s work on facial recognition is available on our website