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Metropolitan Police Service

Facial recognition

Developed in the 60s, facial recognition is a bit of a catch-all term for any technology that involves recognising and cataloguing human faces. The systems that make this happen are computer technologies capable of recognising and identifying an individual from a digital image/ photo or video source. The technology has come a long way since then and the reason we've included something on this website is because the police are using it, in London and elsewhere.

"Facial recognition frequently sparks two distinct fears: that it will not work well enough, or that it will work too well. The first concern highlights the fact that the technology, still in its infancy, is prone to false positives and false negatives, particularly when used with noisy imagery, such as that harvested from CCTV cameras installed years or decades ago. When that technology is used to arrest, convict or imprison people, on a possibly faulty basis, it can cause real harm. Worse, the errors are not evenly distributed; facial recognition systems have regularly been found to be inaccurate at identifying people with darker skin."

What is facial recognition - and how do police use it? | The Guardian | 24 Jan 2020

Some of the pros and cons of facial recognition

Pros include public security and tackling crime, fast and non-invasive identity verification (eg: passport control) and tackling banking fraud
Cons include data privacy concerns, erosion of civil freedoms, lack of regulation, racial bias, reliability, and cost

More

Legal victory over facial recognition | BBC Radio 4 | 14 Aug 2020

Facial recognition technology scrapped at King's Cross site | 2 Sep 2019 | The Guardian
Surveillance software switched off at prestigious development after backlash

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