#UK#Privacy#Biometrics#FacialRecognition: "Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, has filmed the police on numerous facial-recognition deployments. She was there the night Shaun Thompson was picked up by police.
"My experience, observing live facial recognition for many years, [is that] most members of the public don't really know what live facial recognition is," she says.
She says that anyone's face who is scanned is effectively part of a digital police line-up.
"If they trigger a match alert, then the police will come in, possibly detain them and question them and ask them to prove their innocence."
The use of facial recognition by the police is ramping up.
Between 2020 and 2022 the Metropolitan Police used live facial recognition nine times. The following year the figure was 23.
Already in 2024 it has been used 67 times, so the direction of travel is clear.
Champions say that misidentifications are rare.
The Metropolitan Police say that around one in every 33,000 people who walk by its cameras is misidentified.
But the error count is much higher once an someone is actually flagged. One in 40 alerts so far this year has been a false positive."