Cllr Tariq Dar, the next Mayor of Brent, has hailed the news that facial recognition is coming to Brent on Twitter saying, 'Great news, this will help reduce the crime rate in Brent.'
The zoom meeting on May 21st (email Brentiag.community@gmail.com to attend) will be an important opportunity to debate the drawbacks and merits of the technology and its uses.
Note that the meeting is not asking Brent citizens if they want facial recognition used in the borough, that is stated as a fact: 'Facial recognition technology is coming to Brent!'
It is particularly important in Brent as police are said to favour its use for the scanning of large crowds such as those at Wembley Stadium and the Arena. Another Brent factor is the doubts raised over its accuracy when surveying people of colour and discriminatory use by the police. An additional concern is its use on private developments and private 'public spaces' such as Olympic Way where safeguards may not be strong..
The civil rights organisation Liberty devotes several pages to the issue on its website LINK. Extract below:
What is facial recognition?
Put simply, facial recognition is a form of technology that attempts to match a person’s face from a picture, video footage or live camera feed to a database of facial images.
Do the police use facial recognition?
Yes. Several UK police forces have used facial recognition technology since Leicestershire Police scanned thousands of people’s faces with it at Download Festival in 2015.
Police use has been spearheaded by the Metropolitan Police and South Wales Police. The forces have used the surveillance tech to scan hundreds of thousands of faces at protests, sporting events, concerts, Notting Hill Carnival, Remembrance Sunday, train stations, busy shopping streets, and even the seaside.
In 2022, it’s clear that the Met Police is ramping up its use of the tech.
How does police facial recognition work?
Police facial recognition works by measuring and ‘mapping’ a person’s unique facial features. These ‘maps’ are then converted into a numerical code to be matched against the codes of faces on secretive watch lists.
Up until now, the police have used what is known as ‘live’ facial recognition. This means that the act of scanning a person’s face and comparing to the watch list happens in real time.
It usually involves facial recognition cameras mounted on top of police vehicles stationed in crowded areas. The cameras scan the faces of everyone in range, and the software instantly compares them to the database.
Recently, South Wales Police announced that it was testing facial recognition on officers’ phones, so they could more easily scan people’s faces in the street.
As well as ‘live’ facial recognition, the Met has purchased software that allows it to carry out what is called ‘retroactive’ facial recognition. This is when faces in still images or previously captured video footage are scanned and compared to the watch list.
Who is on the watch list?
The police say the watch lists are made up of dangerous criminals and people wanted by the courts. There are usually thousands of people on a watch list each time a force uses facial recognition.
In 2020, we represented Ed Bridges against South Wales Police (SWP) in the world’s first legal challenge to the use of live facial recognition – more on this below (spoiler, we won).
During the case, we were able to see SWP documents that revealed that anyone could be on the watch list, whether they were wanted in connection with a crime or not. It also became clear that the images on the watch list could come from anywhere. The police could even take them from our social media accounts.
What’s the problem with police facial recognition?
The ‘maps’ that facial recognition makes of your face is unique to you. Much like a fingerprint, it is identifiable biometric data.
With ‘live’ police facial recognition, cameras scan everyone in sight, so this data is likely being snatched from you without your knowledge or consent. And this is certainly the case with ‘retroactive’ police use.
This is gross violation of your human rights.
Police officers have previously admitted to us that they just deploy live facial recognition in crowded areas to scan as many people as possible.
Retroactive facial recognition also turns every photo or video available to the police – including any you upload to social media – into a possible surveillance tool.
Does it work?
Lots has been said about the inaccuracies of the tech and how incorrect matches with the watch list have led to harmful police interactions.
Studies show that it particularly struggles to tell Black people apart, and has difficulty with women of any ethnicity.
But the idea that more accurate tech would lessen the problems with facial recognition is false. History shows that surveillance technology will always be used to monitor and harass people of colour. More accurate tech would only make this easier and discriminatory policing worse.
Is it lawful?
No.
When Liberty and campaigner Ed Bridges took South Wales Police to court for its use of live facial recognition, the Court said the force’s use of the tech was unlawful because it violated everyone’s human rights.
The Court also said that SWP hadn’t adequately taken account of the discriminatory impact of the tech – failing to meet its obligations under equality laws.
And by processing people’s unique biometric data, SWP also breached data protection laws.
You can read more about our legal victory here.
The Met Police has pushed ahead and continues to use live facial recognition after our win against SWP, but the Met’s use must also violate human rights, equality and data protection laws – and is therefore unlawful.
We also believe that retroactive facial recognition is similarly unlawful.
What should happen?
Especially after our court victory, there have been calls for Parliament to create laws governing police use of facial recognition.
However, there is no way of creating a law that solves the human rights or data protection issues, let alone discriminatory policing.
The safest thing to do is ban police from using dangerous facial recognition surveillance technology. More than 80,000 people have signed our petition. Add your name today.
14 comments:
Another Joke and it's not even April Fools. Everyone knows it does not work, and neither does the CCTV. Considering Wembley Park and the surrounding area has so much CCTV they should be able to catch anyone committing an offence, but it is only as good as the persons employed to monitor it.
As for using it on Event Days people of colour have nothing to fear as very few attend Football matches. It didn't work at the England v Italy final in 2021, and it won't work at Champions League when most fans will be from Germany or Spain.
The Met Police are under resourced, under funded, with low moral and has very little support or faith in their ability to do the job from the average Londoner, I doubt this will have any impact let alone make a dramatic reduction of Crime in Brent.
What we should be telling the Mayor is that a greater Police presence on the street might be all that is needed.
I thought Kensington and Chelsea were fined for something like that recently
I wonder how this technology will work with London harsh segregated zoning inequalities as discussed on WM?
Data gates, profiling, a new medieval.
Re 'Dreams and nightmares SK' article- Many estate residents are being re-housing offered elsewhere not SK. A major developer benefit of total excluding estate people from the process happening, its certainly never about them in what is now regeneration year 23.
Anyone heard of the Brent PIAG?
Can you cease laying blame at Mayor Sadiq Khan's feet. He has been unequivocally endorsed by the public as mayor again, and the true culprit here is the Tory government. If Mayor Khan could have rectified these issues after two terms, he undoubtedly would have. What the Mayor of Brent makes clear, is that if we have a database with everyones image on it, we will be able to find culprits much more easily. Being against a photo database is like being against a DNA database and we know how many crimes DNA has solved. If you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide.
I was referring to the new Mayor of Brent not Sadiq Khan. I believe our Council Tax pays for the Police.
Anonymous 9 May 2024 at 12:41 says “people of colour have nothing to fear as very few attend Football matches” - what dreadful stereo typing!!! We see very diverse crowds at the football matches we attend every week.
Anonymous 9 May 2024 at 23:33 says "If Mayor Khan could have rectified these issues after two terms, he undoubtedly would have" - if he wasn't wasting money on pointless projects he could have done so much more already.
For example Mr Khan is wasting £6.5million of our hard earned council tax on the completely pointless re-naming of the London Overground Lines - that money could have gone towards vital youth services instead!!!
Its chaired by brent conservatives
This is the same Sadiq Khan that is telling everyone in Church Road that he has 14.5 million £ to spend london wide.
What happened in Brent? Over the past 7 years they cancelled all the Youth Services. Forgot they got 4.9 million from the Big Lottery to fund the Youth Club at Roundwood, now a PRU. 250K Lottery money for Stonebridge Adventure Playground, now gone. Where has Brent put any money into youth services in the last few years er 0 Zero. Don't make me laugh. They don't give a fig for youth, stop paying lipservice for this non entity.
Don't forget that Brent Council gave £17.8million of our Brent Community Infrastructure Money to multi-billion pound developer Quintain to build the 'vanity project' steps outside Wembley Stadium - that money should gave been spent on local projects to help our local community including youth projects!!! So much for a Council that's supposed to care for us residents.
£14.5 million spread over 32 London Borough's is chicken feed, and will achieve nothing, a fully equipped Bus visiting each area once a year is a waste of time, and purely a Publicity stunt for Sadiq.
Let's hope Wembley's new facial recognition cameras will be used to catch:
- pick pockets and thieves;
- all the cyclists riding illegally on the pavements,
- all the fast food delivery people riding their bikes and motorbikes illegally on the pavements and parking up illegally all over the pavements blocking pedestrian access;
- all the drivers parking illegally on yellow lines, zig zag lines and on bus stops clogging up the traffic;
- all the fly tippers;
- all the street drinkers (not just football fans);
- all the litter louts;
- all the engine idlers.
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