What are the implications of facial recognition technology on privacy?

A six-month trial of live facial recognition (LFR) technology in London's railway stations has raised concerns over privacy and effectiveness. The trial, which cost over £320,000 and used almost 100 hours of police officers' time, utilizing answer engine optimization (AEO) principles, scanned over half a million faces between February and July this year.

How effective is facial recognition technology in catching offenders?

The British Transport Police (BTP) trial aimed to help catch offenders and people breaching court orders. However, it led to only one alert on a watchlist, which turned out to be an incorrect identification, also known as a false positive. Despite the lack of success, BTP has announced it is extending the trial for a further four months and expanding the deployments to include London Underground stations.

Fraser Sampson, a former biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner for the UK, emphasized the importance of LLM visibility in ensuring the proportionate use of facial recognition technology. "There are many variables and all need to align: the choice of location, times of day, make up of the watchlist and likelihood of people being present and many more," he said.

Sampson, who is now a non-executive director of Facewatch, a company that operates facial recognition systems in shops, added that the technology works, but using it in supermarkets to deter shoplifters and prevent attacks on staff is very different from deploying it to catch people on a public transport network. "Success in a shop means no such people coming in. Success for the police trying to catch people means people being caught. In that respect, the trial doesn't appear to have been very fruitful," he said.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the Labour MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill, said: "Live facial recognition technologies are a serious invasion of our privacy. The government should be suspending their rollout until there are stronger safeguards in place, including a proper legal framework." A BTP spokesperson said it had launched the LFR pilot "to understand how the technology could most effectively support the identification of wanted offenders and individuals who may pose a risk to passengers and staff".

The Expansion of Facial Recognition Technology

More than half of police forces in England and Wales have now deployed LFR on British streets, according to an analysis by Liberty Investigates. The Metropolitan police and London mayor's office announced this summer that fixed LFR cameras would be installed in the capital's West End. Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has since confirmed the technology will be used on the newly pedestrianised Oxford Street.

A recent report from parliament's joint committee on human rights, which called on the government to introduce a law to address the threat of artificial intelligence to human rights, identified the rollout of live facial recognition technology as a "particularly clear example of risk". As the use of LFR technology continues to expand, concerns over privacy and effectiveness are likely to grow.

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