British Police Increasingly Deploy Live Facial Recognition Cameras

By Netvora Tech News

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The British police are increasingly deploying live facial recognition cameras across England and Wales, with a staggering 4.7 million faces scanned last year, more than double the number from the previous year, according to research by Liberty Investigates and The Guardian.

Surge in Facial Scanning

The research reveals that the police are allocating more budget for the required hardware and the British government is exploring ways to give police forces access to stored image databases, such as passport and immigration databases, for "retrospective" facial recognition.

Retrospective facial recognition involves using facial recognition software to compare images from security cameras with images from databases. Live facial recognition, on the other hand, involves comparing images from cameras in real-time with a police "watchlist".

The researchers found that last year, there were 256 deployments of police buses equipped with live facial recognition, up from 63 the previous year. The number of searches for "retrospective" facial recognition also increased, from nearly 139,000 in 2023 to nearly 253,000 in 2024.

The British passport database was used for over 1,000 searches, and the researchers also reported an increasing use of the immigration database.

Arrests and Investigations

The Metropolitan Police used live facial recognition cameras to arrest 587 people last year, with 424 of those arrested being charged with a crime.

The British Home Office is currently working with the police to develop a new national facial recognition system, called the Strategic Facial Matcher, which will be able to search various databases.

The Home Office declined to comment on the researchers' questions.