On his first day on the job, 14 campaign groups have written to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley requesting an end to the use of facial recognition technologies by police forces. They called the technology “privacy-eroding, inaccurate and wasteful”.
Big Brother Watch, Liberty and Black Lives Matter UK were among the organisations that signed the letter.
Facial recognition technologies have increasingly been used by police authorities around the world to fight against crime. The Metropolitan Police and the South Wales Police are some of the forces that have been known to use these technologies. However, this use of facial-recognition technologies has led to civil rights challenges and condemnation from human rights groups, who argue that the technology is often mistaken and biased.
“During observations at deployments, Big Brother Watch has witnessed multiple false positive matches, which have led to innocent individuals being forced...