Unprecedented Expansion of Facial Recognition Is “Worrying for Democracy”

Police forces across the country are launching an “unprecedented” rollout of Orwellian surveillance technology. Civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch has condemned the move as a “frightening expansion” of the technology and branded it as “worrying for our democracy”.

This comes in response to the announcement from the Home Office that seven more police forces are buying their own live facial recognition technology, joining South Wales Police, Essex Police and the Metropolitan Police in having the mass-surveillance capability. The new forces are Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Surrey, Sussex, Bedfordshire, Thames Valley, and Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

Despite the huge expansion in live facial recognition capabilities across the country, MPs have never voted to authorise the use of such intrusive surveillance technologies. Instead police rely on a patchwork of existing laws to justify its use, with forces left to set their own policies about when and where live facial recognition can be used.

The rollout also comes as the Metropolitan Police face a judicial review about the lawfulness of their use of live facial recognition in a legal case supported by Big Brother Watch, following the misidentification of anti-knife crime community worker Shaun Thompson, who was held and questioned by police in February 2024.

South Wales Police and the Metropolitan Police have been using live facial recognition sporadically since 2016, but have significantly increased deployments in recent years. Both forces are now planning to install permanent live facial recognition cameras in urban centres, which is an unprecedented expansion of surveillance in a democratic country. Essex Police also purchased its own live facial recognition capability in 2024.

Opponents of the technology are also concerned about who ends up on police facial recognition watchlists, which can include victims of crime and “vulnerable” people as well as suspects. There have been cases of protesters not wanted for any crime and people with mental health issues featuring on these lists.

Rebecca Vincent, Interim Director of Big Brother Watch, said:

“This unprecedented escalation in the use of facial recognition technology across the UK is alarming, and represents a significant expansion of the surveillance state. Live facial recognition turns every passerby into a walking barcode and treats us all as a nation of suspects.

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.

This move is not only worrying for our privacy rights, it is worrying for our democracy. The Home Office must scrap its plans to roll out further live facial recognition capacity until robust legislative safeguards are established.”

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. We are crowdfunding financial support for our facial recognition legal challenges.
• 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/

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