British government tells police to increase facial recognition surveillance

British Policing Minister Chris Philp Sunday penned a letter to police forces nationwide urging them to increase their use of both passive and active facial recognition searches.

Passive — or retroactive — facial recognition (RFR) involves police combing through CCTV footage after a crime is committed and matching the suspect’s face with a police database. 

“Every force uses RFR to some extent already, but its use is very variable between Forces and could be greatly increased,” Philp urged police.

In the UK, police can search their own individual database or tap into the Police National Database, which Philp recommends.

“Searching the whole Police National Database (PND) image set rather than just local force ones will maximise the chance of a match, and I encourage routine use of RFR across the entire range of crimes.”

Active — or live — facial recognition (LFR), on the other hand, involves law enforcement using “special purpose cameras” to scan crowds for people on police watchlists.

“I am also very supportive of the use of Live – or Active – Facial Recognition (LFR) to deter and detect crime in public settings that attract large crowds,” assuring police there is a “sound legal basis” for its use. To illustrate the benefit of using LFR, Philp cited a recent sports game where the use of LFR helped police arrest three people, including “one who admitted using threatening and abusive words and being in breach of a court order.”

But UK law enforcement has recently come under fire for its practices regarding its databases and watchlists. Police have yet to delete over three million images of people who were never charged with a crime despite being ordered to do so by a court in 2012.

“So when we’re having conversations about new technologies such as facial recognition, the conversation often comes back to: ‘Why would we trust you to get this bit right? When you’ve still got legacy problems from 10 years ago from other images?’ People want to know with facial recognition: how do they find their way onto a watch list, and how could they get off it? And that’s really important,” UK Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner Fraser Sampson told the Guardian.

Police watchlists are known to include non-criminal taxpayers. At the Formula 1 Aramco British Grand Prix in July live facial recognition was used, but a Freedom of Information request later revealed that only 234 out of 790 names on the police’s LFR watchlist were criminal suspects.