UK expands police facial recognition rollout with 10 new facial recognition vans

Summary

A fresh expansion of UK crimefighters' access to live facial recognition (LFR) technology is being described by officials as "an excellent opportunity for policing." Privacy campaigners diagree. The Home Office said today that more police forces across England will gain LFR capabilities thanks to ten new "cutting edge" vans being wheeled out, adding to those already in use by London's Metropolitan Police and forces in South Wales. Seven forces will gain access to LFR vans as part of the latest expansion. These are: Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Surrey and Sussex (jointly), and Thames Valley and Hampshire (jointly). The UK government insists LFR vans, which are strongly opposed by privacy campaigners, are effective policing tools and are used only in targeted cases informed by firm intelligence. In essence, they are not simply plonked into high-footfall areas and activated in the hope of catching someone on a wanted list somewhere. Various privacy considerations are made with each LFR deployment in the UK, the cops say. These include notifying the public about when, where, and for how long LFR will be used in a given area, allowing them to exercise their right not to be captured by the technology. However, the College of Policing's guidance states that in cases of a critical threat or where there is insufficient time to alert the public, police may still deploy LFR without warning. The government also insists the tech is independently tested at the National Physical Laboratory, which found the underlying algorithm to be accurate and free of age, gender, or ethnicity-related bias. South Wales Police say they have not seen a false alert since August 2019, and claim LFR has never led to a wrongful arrest. Existing deployments in London and South Wales have resulted in 580 arrests over the past 12 months, the Home Office said. It said the types of offenders it has helped capture include rapists, domestic abusers, violent criminals, and 52 registered s...