UK equality watchdog: Met Police facial recognition illegal

The Metropolitan Police’s use of stay facial-recognition (LFR) expertise is illegal, in accordance with UK equality watchdog, citing the necessity for deployments of the expertise to be needed, proportionate and respectful of human rights.

John Kirkpatrick, chief govt of the Equality and Human Rights Fee (EHRC), acknowledged that whereas the tech might be used assist to fight critical crime and maintain individuals protected, the drive is at present failing meet key authorized requirements with its deployments.

“The legislation is evident: everybody has the precise to privateness, to freedom of expression and to freedom of meeting. These rights are very important for any democratic society,” he mentioned.

“As such, there have to be clear guidelines which assure that stay facial-recognition expertise is used solely the place needed, proportionate and constrained by applicable safeguards. We imagine that the Metropolitan Police’s present coverage falls in need of this commonplace.”

The EHRC added that the Met’s present strategy to LFR is incompatible with the European Conference on Human Rights, particularly Articles 8 (proper to privateness), 10 (freedom of expression) and 11 (freedom of meeting and affiliation).

It additional highlighted how, when used on a big scale, even low error charges can have an effect on a big variety of individuals by brining pointless and undesirable police consideration, and warned that its use at protests may have a “chilling impact” on individuals’s freedom of expression and meeting.

Senior cops from each the Met and South Wales Police have beforehand argued {that a} main good thing about facial-recognition expertise is its “deterrence impact.”

The EHRC added that the “excessive threat” nature of LFR means it ought to solely be used when strictly needed and topic to safeguards.

The regulators’ feedback comply with it being granted permission to intervene in an upcoming judicial evaluation of the Met’s LFR use, which was launched by anti-knife crime campaigner Shaun Thompson after he was wrongly recognized as a suspect by the Met’s system.

Thompson, who was returning dwelling from a volunteer shift in Croydon with the Avenue Fathers youth outreach group when he was wrongly stopped in February 2025, beforehand described the system as “cease and search on steroids,” and mentioned it felt like he was being handled as “responsible till confirmed harmless”.

The EHRC mentioned that information reveals that the variety of Black males triggering an “alert” by the expertise is larger than could be anticipated proportionally compared with the inhabitants of London.

Based on information gathered by Inexperienced Occasion London Meeting member Zoë Garbett, greater than half of the Met’s 180 LFR deployments that befell throughout 2024 had been in areas the place the proportion of Black residents is larger than the town’s common, together with Lewisham and Haringey.

Whereas Black individuals comprise 13.5% of London’s whole inhabitants, the proportion is way larger within the Met’s deployment areas, with Black individuals making up 36% of the Haringey inhabitants, 34% of the Lewisham inhabitants, and 40.1% of the Croydon inhabitants, the place the Met can be planning to deploy everlasting LFR cameras.

Whereas the evaluation is not going to happen till January 2026, the EHRC will now be capable of submit proof on the “intrusive methods” the drive has been utilizing the expertise lately.

Responding to the EHRC’s claims, a Met Police spokesperson mentioned: “The Met is dedicated to creating London safer, utilizing information and expertise to find offenders that pose the best threat to our communities. It helped us to take tons of of harmful offenders off London’s streets, together with these wished for rape and home abuse.

“We proceed to have interaction with our communities to construct understanding about how this expertise works, offering reassurances that there are rigorous checks and balances in place to guard individuals’s rights and privateness.

“A judicial evaluation listening to is scheduled for January 2026, and we’re totally engaged on this course of. We’re assured that our use of stay facial recognition is lawful and follows the coverage which is printed on-line.”

At first of August 2025, the Met mentioned it can greater than double its variety of LFR deployments to cowl the lack of 1,400 officers and 300 employees, amid a £260m price range shortfall for the approaching 12 months.

The Met additionally mentioned in July this 12 months that for the reason that begin of 2024, greater than 1,000 arrests have been made utilizing LFR – 773 of which led to the person being charged or cautioned.

In the identical month, dwelling secretary Yvette Cooper confirmed for the primary time that the UK authorities will search to manage police facial recognition by creating “a correct, clear governance framework”, citing police reticence to deploy techniques with out satisfactory guidelines in place. Nonetheless, she declined to say if any new framework might be statutory.

Whereas there have been repeated calls from each Parliament and civil society over a few years for the police’s use of the expertise to be regulated, the House Workplace has constantly maintained that there’s already a “complete” framework in place.

Such calls embody three separate inquiries by the JHAC 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 Expertise Committee, which referred to as for a moratorium on LFR way back to July 2019.

Extra lately, the Ada Lovelace Institute printed a report in Might that famous the UK’s patchwork strategy to regulating biometric surveillance applied sciences is “insufficient”, inserting basic rights in danger and in the end undermining public belief.