The High Court will examine whether the Metropolitan Police is acting lawfully with its deployments of live facial recognition, in the UK’s first judicial review of how the technology is being used
The High Court will examine whether the Metropolitan Police is acting lawfully with its deployments of live facial recognition, in the UK’s first judicial review of how the technology is being used
A judicial review against the Metropolitan Police’s use of live facial recognition (LFR) will argue the force is unlawfully deploying the technology across London, without effective safeguards or constraints in place to protect people’s human rights from invasive biometric surveillance.
Brought by anti-knife campaigner Shaun Thompson, who was wrongfully identified by the Met’s system and subject to a prolonged stop as a result, and privacy group Big Brother Watch, the challenge will argue there are no meaningful safeguards in place to effectively limit how the Met uses the technology.
In particular, it will argue the Met’s policy on where it can be deployed and who it can be used to target is so permissive and leaves so much discretion to the force that it cannot be considered “in accordance with law”.
“The reason for the ‘who’ requirement is clear,” wrote Thompson and Big Brother Watch in their skeleton argument for the case. “It serves to protect against people being selected for a watchlist for reasons that are arbitrary, discriminatory or without sufficient basis. As to the ‘where’ requirement, the concern is not with the individuals on the watchlist, but the thousands of innocent people who will have their biometric data taken while going about lawful quotidian activities.”
They added that, as with the “who”, similarly constraining officers’ discretion as to “where” LFR can be used inhibits officers from selecting locations for reasons that are arbitrary, discriminatory, or otherwise have an insufficient basis.
“That is a safeguard against individual officers selecting areas arbitrarily or improperly targeting areas where people of certain races or religions disproportionately live or consistently targeting deprived communities in London,” they wrote, adding that if there are insufficient constraints on “where” LFR can be used, it will be impossible for people to travel across London without their biometric data being captured and processed.
“Any public place risks becoming one in which people’s identities are liable to be checked to see if they are of interest to the police,” they continued. “That would be to fundamentally transform public spaces and people’s relationship with the police.”Rights breaches
Ultimately, Thompson and Big Brother Watch will argue that the Met’s LFR use breaches the rights to privacy, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly.
This marks the first legal challenge in Europe brought by someone misidentified by facial recognition technology.
After Thompson was wrongly flagged by the technology when travelling through London Bridge, officers detained him while they asked for identity documents, repeatedly demanded fingerprint scans, and inspected him for scars and tattoos.
The police stop continued for over 20 minutes, during which time Thompson was threatened with arrest, despite providing multiple identity documents showing he had been falsely identified.
Thompson, a 39-year-old Black man, described the police’s use of LFR at the time as “stop and search on steroids”.
In August 2020, the Court of Appeal previously found that South Wales Police (SWP) had been deploying LFR unlawfully, on the grounds there were insufficient constraints on the force’s discretion over where LFR could be used, and who could be placed on a watchlist.
“The possibility of being subjected to a digital identity check by police without our consent almost anywhere, at any time, is a serious infringement on our civil liberties that is transforming London,” said Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo ahead of the case being heard.
