New police use of live facial recognition technology in England and Wales has been heavily criticized by human rights groups.
Indeed, the live facial recognition systems will be comparing faces taken from closed-circuit television with people on a watch list so as to alert officers. These new guidelines are said to help empower police and maintain public trust.
However, several human rights groups have stated that these rules were bare bones and had no clear guidance. They pointed out that this practice goes against citizens’ rights and liberties and does the opposite of keeping the population safe by creating an oppressive environment. They have then asked for the practice to be banned.
It was reported that the new live facial recognition system would be taking into account any potential adverse impact on protected groups, be justified and proportionate, delete unused biometric data collect, follow an authorization process, as well as publish the categories of people sought on the watch-list and its criteria.
Besides, the Court of Appeal declared that the system should make sure to have no gender and racial bias, and thus, to do so, implement tighter regulations and data protection legislation. It was stated that a lot more needed to be done still to ensure that live facial recognition technology became clear and comprehensive and provide protection from harm.
