Two people fail in bid to stop live facial recognition cameras in London

Two people who took the Metropolitan Police to court over their use of facial recognition cameras have lost their challenge.

Shaun Thompson said the force’s technology wrongly identified him as a suspect in February 2024 outside London Bridge Tube station.

Along with Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo, Shaun launched a judicial review into the use of the cameras.

Lawyers representing the pair told a High Court hearing last month that the police’s use of LFR is increasing ‘exponentially.’

The Met Police used facial recognition 231 times and scanned around 4 million faces last year, Dan Squires KC said during the judicial review of the extension of facial recognition across other forces.

There are plans to extend the cameras’ use, although consultation on it is still underway.

Earlier this year, the technology was plugged in at one of the UK’s busiest train stations – London Bridge.

The tech, which uses artificial intelligence, will scan faces and compare it against a list of serious criminals at the station, which saw over 54 million passengers last year.

If the system hits a match, it will send out an alert to an officer, who will manually review it and make further checks to decide if the person is a suspect, the force said.

Privacy and civil liberties campaigners have warned against the rollout of the tech, saying its use by police forces across the country is currently not monitored.

Big Brother Watch previously described the ‘mass biometric surveillance’ of people as ‘disturbing.’

In February last year, facial recognition software was installed across Cardiff for the Six Nations games. Despite scanning 162,680 faces, not a single arrest was made, according to the organisation.

Madeleine Stone, a senior advocacy officer at the organisation, previously told Metro the law needs to catch up with the technology first, as there is no legislation governing the use of facial recognition cameras.

‘The police have essentially been left off the leash and can do what they want with this,’ Madeleine said.

‘Everyone gets something wrong sometimes, but what happens when the algorithm gets it wrong? Who is responsible then?’

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