MPs demand stop to live facial recognition surveillance
65 UK MPs and peers, from all political parties, have called for the use of live facial recognition surveillance to be put on pause.
The group of MPs - which includes Conservative MP David Davis, Labour politicians Diane Abbott and John McDonnell, and Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey - called on UK police and private companies to immediately stop using live facial recognition for public surveillance.
British police have used live facial recognition technology (FRT) at public events, including the coronation of King Charles II and the British Grand Prix. However, this technology has long been criticised by civil liberties groups as an invasion of privacy.
The use of “static” FRT seems well established. The policing minister, Chris Philp, has acknowledged that all 45 police forces are currently using FRT. He plans to set up ‘national shoplifting database’ to include the passport photos of all 45 million adults. September saw the launch of Project Pegasus, in which the country’s biggest retailers will hand over their CCTV footage to the police who will run them through their databases using this facial recognition technology to identify shoplifters. Critics say that using passport photos – which people only provide for the purposes of travelling – to track them when they go to the shops is an extreme invasion of privacy.
The parliamentarian’s concern is specifically with “live” facial recognition, such as using a camera on top of a police van to scan everybody who walks past in real time, and then running the images through a database of our “faceprints” – including images taken from social media accounts. Police officers could even use their phone to scan someone’s face and run it through a database of sensitive biometric data.
History suggests that surveillance technology is likely to be targeted at minority groups, especially people of colour. When the Metropolitan Police first trialled this technology, they often deployed it in socially deprived areas and at events attended primarily by people of colour – such as the Notting Hill carnival. MIT research in 2018 found that facial recognition software made mistakes in 21% to 35% of cases for darker-skinned women, but the error rate for light-skinned men was less than 1%.
In June, the European Court of Human Rights described facial recognition technology as highly intrusive, and ruled that using it to identify and arrest participants of peaceful protests could have “a chilling effect in regard of the rights to freedom of expression and assembly”. Use of FRT could soon be banned in the EU under forthcoming legislation.
The MPs’ statement listed many areas of concern with FRT:
its incompatibility with human rights,
the potential for discriminatory impact,
the lack of safeguards,
the lack of an evidence base,
an unproven case of necessity or proportionality,
the lack of a sufficient legal basis,
the lack of parliamentary consideration, and
the lack of a democratic mandate.
JAAG believes that the use of this technology, which has serious implications for individuals’ privacy, must be paused. There needs to be a full public debate about it, and Parliament must review its implications and establish stringent safeguards; the use of any such technology should always be subject to Parliamentary scrutiny.
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