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<\/p>\nHome Secretary says tech will target individuals wanted by the courts<\/p>\n
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The UK government is moving forward with a wider rollout of live facial recognition (LFR) technology across seven police forces, prompting debate over privacy, legal safeguards, and ethical deployment. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper defended the programme as a \u201ctargeted\u201d tool aimed at identifying serious offenders, rather than for low-level offences.<\/p>\n
The plan will see 10 vans equipped with LFR deployed in Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley and Hampshire. Officers operating the technology will follow College of Policing guidance, with checks restricted to police watchlists of wanted criminals, suspects, and individuals subject to court orders or bail conditions.<\/p>\n
Cooper said: \u201cThe way this technology is being used is to identify people who are wanted by the court, who maybe should be returned to prison, or who have failed to appear before the court, or who have breached things like sexual harm prevention orders, so serious criminals. And I think being able to identify them, alongside having proper legal safeguards and a legal framework in place\u2026 we also need to be able to use the technology to catch dangerous criminals and to keep communities safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
The expansion has drawn criticism from privacy advocates, including Labour peer Baroness Shami Chakrabarti, who warned LFR use has been \u201cdeveloped pretty much completely outside the law\u201d and carries risks of bias, with false matches disproportionately affecting certain groups. She described the technology as \u201cincredibly intrusive\u201d and a step towards \u201ca total surveillance society.\u201d<\/p>\n
Data protection<\/p>\n
Concerns over data protection have been echoed by the Information Commissioner\u2019s Office (ICO), which emphasised that biometric data collected through LFR must be handled in a \u201clawful, fair and proportionate\u201d manner. An ICO spokesperson<\/a> said: \u201cWhen used by the police, FRT must be deployed in a way that respects people\u2019s rights and freedoms, with appropriate safeguards in place. FRT is a priority for the ICO due to its potential benefits and risks.\u201d<\/p>\n Cooper stressed that prior deployments, including in South Wales, were focused on serious organised crime rather than minor offences such as ticket touting.<\/p>\n The government plans to introduce a new legal framework to formalise LFR use, with a consultation scheduled for this autumn. Policing minister Dame Diana Johnson defended the rollout, describing it as \u201cabout giving the tools to our police officers to enable them to keep us safe.\u201d Previous deployments have reportedly aided arrests for serious offences including rape, domestic abuse, knife crime and breaches of sex offender restrictions.<\/p>\n Alongside the LFR expansion, the government has committed to the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, assigning a named, contactable officer to every community in England and Wales to address anti-social behaviour, with forces promising to respond to neighbourhood queries within 72 hours.<\/p>\n