London to introduce permanent live facial recognition cameras

London police have announced their plans to install the UK’s first permanent live facial recognition cameras, catching potential criminals by matching their faces with a pre-determined database.

The cameras will be set up in Croydon which has become one of the most targeted areas for facial recognition deployments in the city, leading to the arrest of approximately 200 people by November last year. The Metropolitan Police also said it could extend the surveillance across the capital.

The new cameras will be installed in June or July on lampposts or buildings. The police have previously relied on vans equipped with facial recognition cameras to monitor crowds but these have become high in demand across London, according to Mitch Carr, the Met Police neighborhood policing superintendent for south London.

“The end result will see cameras covering a defined area and will give us much more flexibility around the days and times we can run the operations,” says Carr.

The cameras will operate only when police officers are close and can respond to a database match. If there is no match, the data captured by the camera is immediately deleted, The Times reports.

However, privacy groups such as Big Brother Watch have condemned the move and called for legislative safeguards on facial recognition. The organization has challenged the legality of the London Met Police’s deployment of facial recognition after a case of misidentification.

The UK currently lacks a consistent and unified legal framework regulating the technology and instead relies on a patchwork of legislation. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has been warning that there are no clear guidelines for the police on using live facial recognition while the ­biometrics commissioner has highlighted that police are still storing images of innocent people in its databases.

A recent report from the Biometrics Institute has also highlighted that the lack of regulation could heighten the risk of rejecting the technology by the public. Many other arguments against the technology were relayed by lawmakers during a discussion last year organized by UK Policing Minister Diana Johnston.

However, Chris Philp, the Conservative MP for Croydon South and shadow home secretary, says that permanent live facial recognition is the next logical step for the city.

“This technology has the potential to revolutionize crime fighting in the same way that fingerprints and DNA have in the past,” he says.

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  criminal ID  |  facial recognition  |  London Metropolitan Police  |  police  |  real-time biometrics