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UK: Met Police could deploy facial recognition against protesters

Civil liberties campaigners warn that the facial recognition technology being deployed by London's Metropolitan Police could easily be turned against protesters, and there are significant concerns that, however it is used, the technology will have a far worse impact on ethnic minorities.
Date
29 January 2020
Topics
Coercion and control Discrimination and racism Resistance and solidarity
Region
United Kingdom (UK)
Civil liberties campaigners warn that the facial recognition technology being deployed by London's Metropolitan Police could easily be turned against protesters, and there are significant concerns that, however it is used, the technology will have a far worse impact on ethnic minorities.

UK: Met Police could deploy facial recognition against protesters (Computer Weekly, link):

“The operational use of live facial recognition (LFR) by UK law enforcers could artificially inflate tension between political activists and police during protests, as participants may feel under pressure to conceal their identities because of privacy concerns.

According to the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol), which monitors and resists policing that is excessive, discriminatory or threatens civil liberties, individuals who seek to conceal their identities to evade LFR on privacy grounds could unwittingly garner more attention from police who may assume they are “troublemakers”. It could also dissuade them from participating in political action all together, it added.“

See also: Facial recognition can’t tell black and brown people apart – but the police are using it anyway (gal-dem, link)