Stop facial recognition surveillance immediately, MPs urge police
10 October 2023
MPs and human rights organisations are calling for an “immediate stop” to the use of facial recognition technology for minor crimes, citing democratic infringement.
A coalition of 65 parliamentarians and 31 rights and race equality organisations have criticised the use of facial recognition surveillance by the police and private companies.
In a joint call backed by former Brexit Secretary David Davis MP, Leader of the Liberal Democrats Sir Ed Davey, Green MP Caroline Lucas and former Shadow Attorney General Shami Chakrabarti amongst others, the group warns of “serious concerns” about the “incompatibility with human rights” and “discriminatory impacts” of facial recognition surveillance.
The parliamentarians’ statement criticises a “lack of an evidence base (…), the lack of a sufficient legal basis, (…) and the lack of a democratic mandate” to justify the use of the controversial technology.
“The signatories to this call are rights organisations, race equality organisations, technology experts, and parliamentarians,” the joint stament said.
“We hold differing views about live facial recognition surveillance, ranging from serious concerns about its incompatibility with human rights, to 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.
“However, all of these views lead us to the same following conclusion: ‘We call on UK police and private companies to immediately stop using live facial recognition for public surveillance’.”
This cross-party action comes one month before the UK’s AI safety summit, and closely follows the Policing Minister’s unprecedented announcement earlier this week that the Government will seek to make all 45 million UK passport photos accessible and searchable by police with facial recognition technology in relation to minor crimes such as bicycle thefts and shoplifting.
Governments around the world are considering whether to prohibit or permit the use of live facial recognition. Whilst the European Parliament has endorsed a blanket ban on police using AI-powered facial recognition surveillance under the AI Act and several US cities have banned the technology, the UK’s approach has been described as an “outlier”.
In the UK, the use of live facial recognition surveillance has recently increased in the retail sector and some police forces. Critics have raised concerns about the composition of so-called “watchlists” which could include victims, suspects, people thought to pose a risk of harm to themselves, and associates of any of those people.
Police have previously populated watchlists with protestors and people with mental health issues not suspected of any offences.
Live facial recognition surveillance, whereby individuals’ faces are biometrically scanned by cameras in real-time and compared against a database, has been used in recent months at the Coronation of King Charles II, sports events, concerts and central London.
Research by Big Brother Watch has found that over 89 percent of UK police facial recognition alerts to date have wrongly identified members of the public as people of interest.
International research, and the Metropolitan Police’s own testing of its facial recognition algorithm, have identified disproportionately higher inaccuracy rates when attempting to identify people of colour and women, which the force has attempted to mitigate by adjusting its algorithm’s settings.
According to Big Brother Watch, who regularly attend and observe the Metropolitan Police’s live facial recognition deployments, black men make up the biggest proportion of those flagged by the LFR system and subjected to police intervention and the majority of misidentifications have affected young black boys and even children.
Despite the controversial nature of the technology, there is no specific law on facial recognition and the House of Commons has never formally debated its use.
The UK’s Information Commissioner recently found that facial recognition firm Facewatch, whose software is used by retailers across the UK including Southern Co-op supermarkets, had breached a string of privacy rules including the requirement that data is processed lawfully, fairly and transparently, and the data rights of children.
However, the ICO did not publish this information until it was demanded via the Freedom of Information Act and did not penalise the company.
A recent investigation found that the Policing Minister had threatened to write a public letter to the Commissioner during its probe into Facewatch, unless the outcome was “favourable” to the company.
Only last month, over 180 rights groups and technology experts issued a public call for a global stop to facial recognition surveillance. The international action, taken by 120 civil society organisations working across six continents and over 60 experts called for a stop to the use of facial recognition for the surveillance of publicly accessible spaces and the surveillance of people in migration or asylum contexts.
“This important call from MPs to urgently stop live facial recognition represents the greatest involvement parliamentarians have ever had in Britain’s approach to facial recognition surveillance.
“With the Government now planning to turn all of our passport photos into mugshots for facial recognition scanning, yet again absent any democratic scrutiny, this intervention could not come at a more important time,” said Silkie Carlo, Director of Big Brother Watch.
“This dangerously authoritarian technology has the potential to turn populations into walking ID cards in a constant police lineup.
“As hosts of the AI summit in autumn, the UK should show leadership in adopting new technologies in a rights-respecting way, rather than a way that mirrors the dystopian surveillance practices of Saudi Arabia and China,” Carlo continued.
“There must be an urgent stop to live facial recognition, parliamentary scrutiny and a much wider democratic debate before we introduce such a privacy-altering technology to British life.”