The High Court will hear from privacy campaigners this week who want to reshape the way the Metropolitan Police is allowed to use live facial recognition (LFR) tech.
Civil liberties group Big Brother Watch is supporting the case brought by claimant and anti-knife crime campaigner Shaun Thompson, who said that after being misidentified by LFR cameras in Croydon, police demanded he submit his fingerprints.
“I was misidentified by a live facial recognition system while coming home from a community patrol in Croydon,” said Thompson. “Police officers told me I was a wanted man and demanded my fingerprints even though I’d done nothing wrong. What happened to me was shocking and unfair.”
The High Court hearing will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the legal challenge [PDF] focusing on alleged violations of privacy rights, which are protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Thompson’s lawyers, with input from Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo, will argue that the Met’s LFR policy is too permissive to be compatible with the human right to privacy.
They will argue that the Met’s policy, which allows the force to operate LFR cameras in “crime hotspots,” and “access routes” to those hotspots, is too broad a constraint, given that most parts of London could reasonably fall under the “crime hotspot” definition.
Carlo also submitted her arguments to the case that the Met’s LFR policies threaten the rights protected under Articles 10 and 11 of the Convention, as pop-up deployments allegedly restrict people’s ability to protest.
She said: “The possibility of being subjected to a digital identity check by police without our consent almost anywhere, at any time, is a serious infringement on our civil liberties that is transforming London. When used as a mass surveillance tool, live facial recognition reverses the presumption of innocence and destroys any notion of privacy in our capital.
“We are totally out of step with the rest of Europe on live facial recognition. This is an opportunity for the court to uphold our democratic rights and instigate much-needed safeguards against intrusive AI-driven surveillance.”
The High Court hearing comes a month after the UK government announced plans to “ramp up” police use of facial recognition and biometrics.
The Home Office opened a consultation for experts to weigh in on new laws that will govern a responsible increase in this technology’s use, so that police can use it more often and with greater confidence.
Sarah Jones, crime and policing minister, said facial recognition technology “is the biggest breakthrough for catching criminals since DNA matching.”
“It has already helped take thousands of dangerous criminals off our streets and has huge potential to strengthen how the police keep us safe,” she added.
“We will expand its use so that forces can put more criminals behind bars and tackle crime in their communities.” ®