Outside supermarkets or in festival crowds, millions are having their features scanned by real-time facial recognition systems in the UK — the only European country to deploy the technology on a large scale. At London’s Notting Hill Carnival, where 2 million people were expected to celebrate Afro-Caribbean culture yesterday and today, facial recognition cameras were deployed near entrances and exits.
The police said their objective was to identify and intercept wanted people by scanning faces in large crowds and comparing them with thousands of suspects already in the police database. The technology is “an effective policing tool which has already been successfully used to locate offenders at crime hotspots resulting in well over 1,000 arrests since the start of 2024,” Metropolitan Police Chief Mark Rowley said.
The technology was first tested in 2016, and its use has increased considerably over the past three years in the UK. About 4.7 million faces were scanned last year alone, according to the non-governmental organization Liberty.
Photo: AFP
British police have deployed the live facial recognition system about 100 times since late January, compared with only 10 between 2016 and 2019.
Examples include before two Six Nations rugby games and outside two Oasis concerts in Cardiff last month.
When a person on a police “watchlist” passes near the cameras, the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered system, often set up in a police van, triggers an alert. The suspect can then be immediately detained once police checks confirm their identity.
However, such mass data capture on the streets of London, also seen during the coronation of King Charles III in 2023, “treats us like a nation of suspects,” the Big Brother Watch organization said.
“There is no legislative basis, so we have no safeguards to protect our rights, and the police is left to write its own rules,” the organization’s interim director Rebecca Vincent said.
Its private use by supermarkets and clothing stores to combat the sharp rise in shoplifting has also raised concerns, with “very little information” available about how the data are used, she added.
Most use Facewatch, a service provider that compiles a list of suspected offenders in the stores it monitors and raises an alert if one of them enters the premises.
“It transforms what it is to live in a city, because it removes the possibility of living anonymously,” said Daragh Murray, a lecturer in human rights law at Queen Mary University of London.
“That can have really big implications for protests, but also participation in political and cultural life,” he added.
Often, those using such stores do not know that they are being profiled.
“They should make people aware of it,” Abigail Bevon, a 26-year-old forensic scientist, said by the entrance of a London store using Facewatch.
She said she was “very surprised” to find out how the technology was being used.
While acknowledging that it could be useful for the police, she said that its deployment by retailers was “invasive.”
Since February, EU legislation governing AI has prohibited the use of real-time facial recognition technologies, with exceptions such as counterterrorism.
Apart from a few cases in the US, “we do not see anything even close in European countries or other democracies,” Vincent said.
“The use of such invasive tech is more akin to what we see in authoritarian states such as China,” she added.
British Secretary of State for the Home Department Yvette Cooper recently promised that a “legal framework” governing its use would be drafted, focusing on “the most serious crimes.”
However, her ministry this month authorized police forces to use the technology in seven new regions.
Usually placed in vans, permanent cameras are also scheduled to be installed for the first time in Croydon, south London, next month. Police assure that they have “robust safeguards,” such as disabling the cameras when officers are not present and deleting the biometric data of those who are not suspects.
However, the UK’s human rights regulator on Wednesday said that the Metropolitan Police’s policy on using the technology was “unlawful,” because it was “incompatible” with rights regulations.
Eleven organizations, including Human Rights Watch, wrote a letter to the Metropolitan Police chief, urging him not to use it during Notting Hill Carnival, accusing him of “unfairly targeting” the Afro-Caribbean community while highlighting the racial biases of AI.
Shaun Thompson, a 39-year-old black man living in London, said he was arrested after being wrongly identified as a criminal by one of these cameras and has filed an appeal against the police.
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
‘MOBILIZED’: While protesters countered ICE agents, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz activated the state’s National Guard to ‘support the rights of Minnesotans’ to assemble Hundreds of counterprotesters drowned out a far-right activist’s attempt to hold a small rally in support of US President Donald Trump’s latest immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Saturday, as the governor’s office announced that National Guard troops were mobilized and ready to assist law enforcement, although not yet deployed to city streets. There have been protests every day since the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ramped up immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul by bringing in more than 2,000 federal officers. Conservative influencer Jake Lang organized an anti-Islam, anti-Somali and pro-US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
NASA on Saturday rolled out its towering Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft as it began preparations for its first crewed mission to the Moon in more than 50 years. The maneuver, which takes up to 12 hours, would allow the US space agency to begin a string of tests for the Artemis 2 mission, which could blast off as early as Feb. 6. The immense orange and white SLS rocket, and the Orion vessel were slowly wheeled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and painstakingly moved 6.5km to Launch Pad 39B. If the
RSS