The BBC reports that the Metropolitan Police are to deploy Live Facial Recognition at the Notting Hill Carnival this year. LINK The technology has been used in Brent in Wembley Central and Kilburn High Road,
Lord Boateng AKA Paul Boateng raised concerns about its use in the House of Lords ealier this month and was backed up by Green peer Baroness Jones AKA Jenny Jones.
Lord Boateng was MP for Brent South from 1987 to 2005. He asked (They Work for You):
My Lords, a US Government study suggests that facial recognition algorithms are far less accurate in identifying African-American and Asian faces than Caucasian faces, and that African and Asian women are 10 to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than Caucasian ones. The study identified 99 developers, including Intel, Microsoft, Toshiba and the Chinese firms Tencent and DiDi Chuxing, as potential problems in this area of procurement. What research are the UK Government going to commission on this, and how are these firms to be treated for the purposes of procurement by police forces in this country?
Lord Hanson (Minister of State at the Home Department) responded:
My noble friend touches on important issues and again, I refer to the point I made earlier to the noble Baroness. A survey of the existing use of facial recognition technology estimated that there was no discrepancy between gender and race. My noble friend shows slight dissatisfaction with that potential outcome, and I say to him that those are the very factors we want to look at in the guidance my right honourable friend is considering bringing forward. Self-evidently, if we are going to use facial recognition technology, it needs to be accurate, regulated, proportionate, intelligence-led and organised in a way that does not discriminate against sex, race or any other characteristic.
Baroness Jones was not convinced on safeguards:
My Lords, noble Lords have had the opportunity twice in the last month to be briefed by the Met Police on facial recognition. On both occasions, including when Minister Johnson from the other end was present, it was clear, as the Met admitted, that it does not have clear oversight, which the Minister also admitted in an earlier answer. When are the Government going to provide some clear regulations? In what other area of public-facing policing do the police make up their own rules?
Today Responding to news that the Met plans to use facial recognition at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival, Big Brother Watch interim director Rebecca Vincent said:
It is worrying to see the Met resorting to the use of invasive live facial recognition technology at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival after scrapping it when a prior trial led to widespread outcry on the grounds of bias. We know that LFR is less accurate in scanning minority faces, so using it to target attendees of this beloved cultural celebration is particularly sinister. Plans to use this dangerous and discriminatory technology should be immediately scrapped.
This planned deployment is even more concerning given the continued lack of a legislative basis, leaving police to write their own rules with no accountability or oversight. Capturing biometrics on a mass scale will not make London safer. The Met should channel its resources into a proper on-the-ground police presence to deal with actual criminals rather than compromising the privacy rights of millions of innocent carnival-goers and local residents.
