Met Police Official States that Live Facial Recognition in London is “Completely Fair”
A committee noted that the decisions regarding deployment tend to vary across the forces, and South Wales Police do not intend to use LFR in protests. An official from the Metropolitan Police defended the fairness of deploying live facial recognition (LFR) in London, stating that it’s “absolutely fair.” During the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee hearing, Lindsey Chiswick, director of intelligence at the Met, indicated that balance between security and privacy is correct. She mentioned that if the system doesn’t find a match against a watch list, the image would be destroyed immediately and automatically. She also claimed that a majority of the public are supportive of the police using the tool based on surveys. Other witnesses, however, questioned the proportionality of scanning the public at scale after revealing that the Met had scanned 144,000 faces in 2020, but only made eight arrests that did not involve serious crimes. The Court of Appeal ruled that the use of facial recognition in South Wales breached privacy and had racial or gender bias. Both the Met and South Wales Police are the first two forces to trial LFR technologies, and both trials have been surrounded by controversy regarding privacy, public consent, and system inaccuracies and bias. South Wales Police told the committee that they do not plan to use LFR in protests as they believe better technologies are available for gathering intelligence in relation to protests, although they would not rule it out.
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