The police’s use of facial recognition technology is to be significantly expanded in an attempt to catch more offenders, ministers have announced.
Under the plans, 10 live facial recognition (LFR) vans will be used by seven forces across England to help identify “sex offenders or people wanted for the most serious crimes”, according to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.
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The tech, which has been trialled in London and south Wales, will be subject to strict rules, the Home Office said, but human rights groups have warned it is “dangerous and discriminatory”.
Amnesty International UK said the plans should be “immediately scrapped”, with facial recognition proven to be “discriminatory against communities of colour”.
“It has been known to lead to misidentification and the risk of wrongful arrest,” said Alba Kapoor, the charity’s racial justice lead, “and it’s also known to be less accurate in scanning the faces of people of colour.”
The Home Office said the LFR vans will only be deployed when there is “specific intelligence”, and will be operated by trained officers who will check every match made by the cameras.
The vehicles will also only be used against bespoke watch lists, compiled for each use under guidelines set by the College of Policing.
The vans will be operated by police forces in Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Surrey and Sussex (jointly), and Thames Valley and Hampshire (jointly).
‘The most serious offenders’
Ms Cooper has said ministers are focused on making sure “there are proper safeguards in place”.
As part of the plans, the home secretary has announced she will be launching a consultation on how and when the cameras should be used, and with what safeguards, which the government will use to draw up a new legal framework for the use of the cameras.
Ms Cooper said the tech had been used in London and South Wales “in a targeted way”, and helped catch “the most serious offenders, including people wanted for violent assaults or for sex offences”.
According to the Metropolitan Police, the tech has led to 580 arrests for offences such as rape, domestic crime and knife crime in the space of 12 months.
The government has pointed to independent testing by the National Physical Laboratory, which it said found the tech was “accurate” and showed “no bias for ethnicity, age, or gender”.
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Liberty has welcomed the government’s decision to create a statutory framework for using facial recognition, but said that should be in place before the tech is rolled out.
“There’s no reasonable excuse to be putting even more cameras on our streets before the public have had their say and legislation is brought in to protect all of us,” said a statement.
The civil liberties charity cited how more than 1.6 million people have had their faces scanned in South Wales, mostly on football match days in Cardiff city centre.
But Lindsey Chiswick, from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), has said the expansion “is an excellent opportunity for policing”, and will help officers locate suspects “quickly and accurately”.
