Responding to news that police forces in South Wales and Gwent are launching an Operator Initiated Facial Recognition app, Jake Hurfurt, Head of Research and Investigations at Big Brother Watch said:
“On-the-spot face scans could turn South Wales into a ‘papers please’ society and undermine our right to go about our business without having to explain or identify ourselves to police officers. This Orwellian tech is alarmingly close to introducing ID cards by the back door. In Britain, none of us has to identify ourselves to police without very good reason but this unregulated surveillance tech threatens to take that fundamental right away.
“We all want police to be able to work efficiently but mobile facial recognition creates a dangerous imbalance between the public’s rights with the police’s powers.
“South Wales Police will search against thousands of unlawfully held photos every time they do a face scan, and they should be fixing this ongoing industrial scale privacy breach rather than exploiting these photos for yet more surveillance. Trial data shows that South Wales Police disproportionately targeted ethnic minorities for face scans, which will further undermine trust in the police.
“The Government is long overdue in regulating facial recognition to protect the public’s rights, and should urgently stop police forces using mobile face scanning tech.”
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Spokespeople are available for interview – please contact 07730439257 or info@bigbrotherwatch.org.uk
Find out more about our campaign to stop facial recognition here.