The UK government has revealed plans to significantly enhance police surveillance capabilities through the introduction of 10 new vans equipped with live facial recognition technology, however privacy activists have condemned the move describing it as an Orwellian technology.
The rollout of the live facial recognition or LFR [1] expands the implementation of biometric surveillance by law enforcement agencies across the country. License Plate Recognition vans will be assigned to several police forces, including Greater Manchester Police, West Yorkshire Police, Bedfordshire Police, and the jointly operated Surrey and Sussex Police, as well as Thames Valley and Hampshire Police. They claim this technology aims to assist in identifying individuals sought for serious offenses, including sexual crimes, violent assaults, homicides, and organized crime. The technology identifies faces and evaluates them against police watchlists that include images of wanted criminals, suspects, and individuals under court orders. According to Home Office policy, trained officers in the van manually verify the matches, and images that do not correspond to a watchlist are promptly deleted.
Yvette Cooper who [2] is the Secretary of State for the Home Department claims the police vans [3] will be deployed exclusively based on specific intelligence and will be used to address serious crimes, including sexual offenses and violence. “Within the next year, we will have 3,000 new neighbourhood officers and PCSOs in place, which is a big shift. We also want them to have more powers to tackle off-road bikes, shop theft, street theft and other crimes that have blighted some of our town and city centres, so everyone can feel safe in their own town. And we will provide police with the tools they need to do their jobs. Facial recognition will be used in a targeted way to identify sex offenders or people wanted for the most serious crimes who the police have not been able to find,” said Cooper.
However, [4] civil liberties organisation Big Brother Watch has expressed concerns over what they termed the “significant expansion of the surveillance state,” describing it as “alarming.” Big Brother Watch is initiating a legal challenge [4] against the Metropolitan Police regarding the use of technology related to facial recognition systems. The organization is joined by Shaun Thompson, who was incorrectly identified by a LFR camera. Shaun Thompson was detained by police in February 2024 near London Bridge Tube station. Big Brother Watch announced that the judicial review, set to take place in January, represents the first legal challenge against the “intrusive technology.” Madeleine Stone, [6] who is a senior advocacy officer said, “It's a really intrusive new power, absent of any democratic scrutiny. There are no specific laws on the use of facial recognition, they're really writing their own rules on how they use it. Shaun's legal challenge is such an important opportunity for the government and the police to take stock of how this technology is spreading across London in a really unaccountable fashion.”
Rebecca Vincent, [7] who is the interim director of Big Brother Watch said, “Police have interpreted the absence of any legislative basis authorising the use of this intrusive technology as carte blanche to continue to roll it out unfettered, despite the fact that a crucial judicial review on the matter is pending.” Vince also [8] said in a press release, “The Home Office must scrap its plans to roll out further live facial recognition capacity until robust legislative safeguards are established.”
Young people have also described the decision by Greater Manchester Police to deploy vans equipped with live facial recognition technology as a “totalitarian” move. The initiative will enable the police to [9] scan the faces of pedestrians and compare them to a database of wanted individuals. [10] Assistant Chief Constable Jackson announced that the police force plans to deploy 2 vans equipped with Live Facial Recognition technology. This initiative is part of the efforts by local policing teams to maintain the safety of communities throughout Greater Manchester. “We look forward to the introduction of this additional tool to fight crime. Mobile LFR units will allow us to identify offenders, keep people safe and protect our communities, all activity will be publicised on our website and social media channels no decision on where the LFR vans will deployed has been made at this time. We will provide notification to the public about any planned ahead of future LFR deployments,” said Assistant Chief Constable Jackson.