Responding to reports that the Metropolitan Police plan to double their use of live facial recognition technology, Madeleine Stone, Senior Advocacy Officer at Big Brother Watch, said:
“Criminals should be brought to justice, but papering over the cracks of broken policing with Orwellian tech is not the solution. Live facial recognition subjects every passerby to a police biometric identity check, turning the public into walking barcodes.
Facial recognition technology remains dangerously unregulated in the UK, meaning police forces are writing their own rules about how they use the technology and who they place on watchlists. This is an authoritarian technology that can have life-changing consequences when it makes mistakes, yet neither the public nor parliament has ever voted on it.
Policing resources are threadbare in London, and with many serious crimes not even being investigated, spending millions of pounds on rights-abusing technology is an insult to Londoners. The expansion of facial recognition technology comes at a serious cost to the taxpayer, to our civil liberties, and to stretched policing resources.”
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 – https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/campaigns/stop-facial-recognition/