Outside supermarkets and within festival crowds, millions of people are having their facial features scanned by AI-powered systems without their knowledge or consent.
Metropolitan Police chief Mark Rowley stated that “an effective policing tool which has already been successfully used to locate offenders at crime hotspots resulting in well over 1,000 arrests since the start of 2024.”
According to the NGO Liberty, approximately 4.7 million faces were scanned during 2024 alone through these surveillance systems.
The system operates by scanning faces in crowds and comparing them against thousands of suspects already contained within police databases.
Suspects can then be immediately detained once police officers confirm their identity through additional checks.
Rebecca Vincent, interim director of Big Brother Watch, told AFP that “there is no legislative basis, so we have no safeguards to protect our rights, and the police is left to write its own rules.”
Vincent added that “very little information” exists regarding how collected data is being used by these private entities.
Daragh Murray, a human rights law lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, warned that “it transforms what it is to live in a city, because it removes the possibility of living anonymously.”
Many shoppers remain completely unaware they are being profiled when entering stores using these surveillance systems.
While acknowledging potential police benefits, Bevon complained that retail deployment felt “invasive” to personal privacy.
Vincent emphasised that “we do not see anything even close in European countries or other democracies” apart from limited United States usage.
Interior minister Yvette Cooper recently promised a “legal framework” governing technology use focused on “the most serious crimes”.
Permanent cameras are scheduled for installation in Croydon, south London, marking the first fixed deployment beyond mobile van setups.
The UK’s human rights regulator declared Metropolitan Police’s technology policy “unlawful” for being “incompatible” with rights regulations.
These groups accused police of “unfairly targeting” the Afro-Caribbean community while highlighting documented AI racial biases.
Thompson has filed an appeal against the police following his mistaken identification and detention. – AFP
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