Civil liberties groups prepare battle to outlaw controversial police facial recognition cameras

Controversial facial recognition cameras being brought in by Britain’s biggest police force face being shut down by legal challenges from civil liberties groups.

The Metropolitan Police announced on Friday it will deploy the cameras in London within weeks, with images compared against a database of known criminals, helping the force to catch suspects, according to Scotland Yard.

But campaigners claim the scheme will breach privacy and ‘pave the way for a surveillance state’ and are set to go to court to close it down.

Fears over the misuse of facial- recognition technology were raised by BBC1’s hit thriller last year The Capture, starring Holliday Grainger and Callum Turner.

Big Brother Watch launched a crowd-funded High Court action against a Met Police pilot scheme for the technology in 2018. 

The action was paused because the force said it had yet to make a decision on the use of the technology.

And in July, an independent review commissioned by the Met found that in trials just 19 per cent of matches were accurate with ‘absolute confidence’.

However, the force has forged ahead with the system, claiming it now has 70 per cent accuracy, though independent experts have questioned this.

Big Brother Watch claims the technology breaches the public’s privacy under the European Convention on Human Rights. 

The campaign group’s director Silkie Carlo, said yesterday: ‘The Met were going to make a decision when they had the results of their independent review, but clearly they didn’t like the results of the review.

‘We’re urgently considering our options for the most robust action we can take. We will continue to challenge it until we can win.’

And Hannah Couchman, of civil-rights group Liberty, warned: ‘This move by the Met paves the way for a surveillance state.’

Data protection watchdog the Information Commissioner’s Office yesterday said it was concerned the legal framework was not in place for the technology’s roll-out across the country.

Met Assistant Commissioner Nick Ephgrave said the force believed that a High Court ruling in September allowing the use of the technology by South Wales Police provided the legal basis for the Met’s roll-out of facial recognition kits costing £200,000.

But Ed Bridges, a former Lib Dem councillor from Cardiff, has claimed his image was captured unlawfully by South Wales police when he went out to buy a lunchtime sandwich. 

The High Court ruled against him and the case is now subject to an appeal.

Mr Ephgrave added that the technology was a ‘fantastic crime-fighting tool’ that would allow the force to ‘bear down on violent and serious offenders’.