Landmark authorized problem in opposition to police facial recognition begins
A judicial evaluation in opposition to the Metropolitan Police’s use of reside facial recognition (LFR) will argue the pressure is unlawfully deploying the expertise throughout London, with out efficient safeguards or constraints in place to guard folks’s human rights from invasive biometric surveillance.
Introduced by anti-knife campaigner Shaun Thompson, who was wrongfully recognized by the Met’s system and topic to a protracted cease in consequence, and privateness group Huge Brother Watch, the problem will argue there aren’t any significant safeguards in place to successfully restrict how the Met makes use of the expertise.
Particularly, it’s going to argue the Met’s coverage on the place it may be deployed and who it may be used to focus on is so permissive and leaves a lot discretion to the pressure that it can’t be thought of “in accordance with legislation”.
“The explanation for the ‘who’ requirement is obvious,” wrote Thompson and Huge Brother Watch of their skeleton argument for the case. “It serves to guard in opposition to folks being chosen for a watchlist for causes which might be arbitrary, discriminatory or with out ample foundation. As to the ‘the place’ requirement, the priority will not be with the people on the watchlist, however the hundreds of harmless individuals who could have their biometric knowledge taken whereas going about lawful quotidian actions.”
They added that, as with the “who”, equally constraining officers’ discretion as to “the place” LFR can be utilized inhibits officers from deciding on areas for causes which might be arbitrary, discriminatory, or in any other case have an inadequate foundation.
“That may be a safeguard in opposition to particular person officers deciding on areas arbitrarily or improperly focusing on areas the place folks of sure races or religions disproportionately reside or persistently focusing on disadvantaged communities in London,” they wrote, including that if there are inadequate constraints on “the place” LFR can be utilized, it will likely be inconceivable for folks to journey throughout London with out their biometric knowledge being captured and processed.
“Any public place dangers changing into one during which folks’s identities are liable to be checked to see if they’re of curiosity to the police,” they continued. “That might be to essentially rework public areas and folks’s relationship with the police.”
Rights breaches
Finally, Thompson and Huge Brother Watch will argue that the Met’s LFR use breaches the rights to privateness, freedom of expression, and freedom of meeting.
This marks the primary authorized problem in Europe introduced by somebody misidentified by facial recognition expertise.
After Thompson was wrongly flagged by the expertise when travelling by way of London Bridge, officers detained him whereas they requested for id paperwork, repeatedly demanded fingerprint scans, and inspected him for scars and tattoos.
The police cease continued for over 20 minutes, throughout which era Thompson was threatened with arrest, regardless of offering a number of id paperwork displaying he had been falsely recognized.
Thompson, a 39-year-old Black man, described the police’s use of LFR on the time as “cease and search on steroids”.
In August 2020, the Court docket of Attraction beforehand discovered that South Wales Police (SWP) had been deploying LFR unlawfully, on the grounds there have been inadequate constraints on the pressure’s discretion over the place LFR could possibly be used, and who could possibly be positioned on a watchlist.
“The opportunity of being subjected to a digital id test by police with out our consent nearly wherever, at any time, is a severe infringement on our civil liberties that’s remodeling London,” stated Huge Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo forward of the case being heard.
“When used as a mass surveillance device, reside facial recognition reverses the presumption of innocence and destroys any notion of privateness in our capital. This authorized problem is a landmark step in direction of defending the general public in opposition to intrusive monitoring.”
Authorized arguments
On the place police can deploy LFR, the Met’s coverage paperwork state the pressure can deploy LFR cameras at “crime hotspots”, together with “entry routes” to these hotspots; for “protecting safety operations”, that means at public occasions or important nationwide infrastructure; and areas primarily based on officers’ intelligence about “the possible location [of] … sought individuals”.
Nonetheless, in line with their skeleton argument, Thompson and Huge Brother Watch will say the coverage does “not meaningfully constrain the discretion as to the place LFR may be situated”.
It added that whereas these use instances are supposed to circumscribe the place the tech can be utilized, a third-party evaluation performed by Martin Utley – a professor of operational analysis at College School London – means that, in apply, “they confer far too broad a discretion on particular person officers, and allow them to deploy LFR wherever they select within the important majority, if not the overwhelming majority, of public areas within the Metropolitan Police District at any time”.
The argument additionally added that whereas the Met’s LFR coverage permits officers to designate areas as “crime hotspots” primarily based on “operational expertise as to future criminality”, that is “opaque and fully subjective”.
Utley particularly discovered that an estimated 47% of the Met’s policing district is labelled as a “crime hotspot”, and that LFR could possibly be deployed on entry routes that cowl an extra 38%, rendering 85% of London open to LFR deployments.
A separate evaluation performed by the Met discovered that LFR may be situated in round 40% of the Metropolitan Police District, in contrast with Utley’s 47%.
Highlighting how SWP’s use of the tech was discovered illegal as a result of broad discretion conferred to officers in that case, the argument claims that, taken all collectively, the Met’s deployment use instances imply that “many of the metropolis is roofed”.
“There are two methods LFR may be deployed,” it stated. “It may be utilized in a focused approach. For instance, if the police have affordable grounds to suspect that specific people have been going to interact in violence at a soccer sport, they could possibly be positioned on a watchlist and LFR used to detect their presence within the neighborhood.
“Or LFR may be deployed in a mass and untargeted approach, deciding on areas the place a really giant variety of individuals are more likely to go and utilizing a really giant watchlist, within the hope that somebody on the listing will occur to go by.
“It was exactly such mass and untargeted use that involved the CA [Court of Appeal] in Bridges [the case against SWP], which discretion it thought of needed to be constrained.”
Not like the case in opposition to SWP’s LFR use, nonetheless, which sought to find out the proportionality of the interferences with a selected particular person’s particular person rights on the 2 events his biometric info was captured by the system, the judicial evaluation seeks to problem the lawfulness of the expertise’s mass use.
“For the aim of the IAWL [in accordance with law] requirement it’s important if there may be mass use of LFR to repeatedly course of the biometric knowledge of thousands and thousands of individuals with the capability to remodel public areas,” it stated. “When contemplating what’s required when it comes to constraints and safeguards to make sure a measure is IAWL, the Court docket should think about, amongst different issues, the variety of folks a measure impacts, and never a single particular person’s rights.”
The Met, however, will argue that the general public are “usually at liberty to keep away from the related LFR space”, and that as people’ “familiarity” with LFR will increase, it may be thought of much less rights-intrusive.
The pressure can even argue that, as a result of officers’ discretion round LFR deployments will not be unconstrained, the case will not be an IAWL challenge, asserting that “as long as the Court docket is glad there may be not unfettered discretion on the constable deciding the place to find LFR, [there] will not be a maintainable legality problem.”
The Met added that as a result of “there aren’t any elements of the Coverage that permit unfettered discretion for an officer so as to add whomever she or he needs to a watchlist or place the LFR digicam wherever she or he needs … there isn’t a maintainable assault on the Coverage as missing the standard of legislation”.
In essence, the Met claims that questions in regards to the breadth of officers’ discretion relate solely to the proportionality of its method, moderately than its total lawfulness.
Lack of major laws
The landmark authorized problem in opposition to LFR is being heard only a matter of weeks after the UK authorities pledged to “ramp up” the police use of facial recognition and biometrics.
Whereas the usage of LFR by police – starting with the Met’s deployment at Notting Hill Carnival in August 2016 – has already ramped up massively lately, there has to this point been minimal public debate or session, with the Dwelling Workplace claiming for years that there’s already “complete” authorized framework in place.
Nonetheless, in December 2025, the Dwelling Workplace launched a 10-week session on the usage of LFR by UK police, permitting events and members of the general public to share their views on how the controversial expertise needs to be regulated.
The division has stated that though a “patchwork” authorized framework for police facial recognition exists (together with for the rising use of the retrospective and “operator-initiated” variations of the expertise), it doesn’t give police themselves the arrogance to “use it at considerably better scale … nor does it persistently give the general public the arrogance that it will likely be used responsibly”.
It added that the present guidelines governing police LFR use are “sophisticated and obscure”, and that an peculiar member of the general public could be required to learn 4 items of laws, police nationwide steerage paperwork and a spread of detailed authorized or knowledge safety paperwork from particular person forces to totally perceive the idea for LFR use on their excessive streets.
There have additionally been repeated calls from each Parliament and civil society over a few years for the police’s use of facial recognition to be regulated.
This contains three separate inquiries by the Justice and Dwelling Affairs Committee into shoplifting, police algorithms and police facial recognition; two of the UK’s former biometrics commissioners, Paul Wiles and Fraser Sampson; an impartial authorized evaluation by Matthew Ryder QC; the UK’s Equalities and Human Rights Fee; and the Home of Commons Science and Know-how Committee, which known as for a moratorium on reside facial recognition way back to July 2019.
Extra just lately, the Ada Lovelace Institute printed a report in Might 2025 that stated the UK’s patchwork method to regulating biometric surveillance applied sciences is “insufficient”, inserting basic rights in danger and finally undermining public belief.
In August 2025, after being granted permission to intervene within the judicial evaluation of the Met’s LFR use, the UK’s equality watchdog stated the pressure is utilizing the expertise unlawfully, citing the necessity for its deployments to be essential, proportionate and respectful of human rights.
