Live facial recognition should shape future of policing, says former UK PM

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is a fan of live facial recognition. A report in The Times quotes Blair saying that the controversial biometric technology “boosts response times and helps identify suspects quickly, in busy places like train stations and events.” Blair believes live facial recognition, digital identity and machine learning technologies can “enhance justice.”

It’s worth noting exactly what kind of justice Blair is espousing. As the U.S. sees political fracture over mass deportations, Blair is pushing digital ID as a tool for tougher immigration control, so “we know precisely who has a right to be here”.

“Live video from body cams and CCTV can be used to provide real-time advice to officers from a command centre or deploy officers to where they are most needed,” Blair says. “AI will go even further, spotting crime patterns, guiding patrols, and streamlining decisions.”

According to the Times, live facial recognition systems currently in use in the UK enable computers to remember 16,000 faces on police systems, the sex offenders register and a database of high-risk missing people. The technology “immediately and permanently deletes any faces that do not match” and, “on average, makes only one mistake for every 6,000 faces scanned.”

“Of course, concerns about privacy and security are valid,” says Blair. “But these systems, done in the right way, actually give individuals more control over their data. The key is building trust and designing by intention systems that are secure, fair, inclusive and effective at combating crime and making us all safer.”

Police have a decidedly mixed record on building public trust, and Blair’s vision for a future of criminal law enforcement shaped by facial recognition technology and digital ID, in which one of the priorities is mass surveillance, sounds a lot like the problems articulated by critics of public facial recognition deployments. An article in The Conversation, written by two UK academics, puts FRT in the context of wider legislative trends that put limits on public protest – particularly around the issue of face coverings.

“The government has introduced a bill that would make it a criminal offence to conceal your identity at a protest,” they write. Why now? Not, they argue, because of new challenges in policing protests, but because of facial recognition technology.

Having snuck retrospective facial recognition in under the noses of the public over the past decade, say the authors, police are now doing the same with live facial recognition. “South Wales Police recently deployed this technology across Cardiff’s pedestrian areas. And London’s Metropolitan Police are planning to install the first permanent live facial recognition cameras in the capital.”

“Being identified by police was once only a possibility, now it is a near certainty,” say – and, most concerningly, “the only rules currently governing the police’s use of facial recognition are developed by police forces themselves.”

“The passage of this bill would have significant implications for the right to anonymity in public places. It is unparalleled among liberal democratic states, bringing UK practice into line with Russia, Hungary and China.”

To avoid the chilling effect they say biometric surveillance has on legal political protest, the authors are working with the UN to develop a model protocol for law enforcement that sets out practical guidance for policing protest. The protocol “explicitly prohibits the use of remote biometric technology, like facial recognition or retina scanning, to identify protesters during peaceful demonstrations,” which the authors “argue is inconsistent with police’s obligation to facilitate peaceful protest.”

Earlier in April, UK law enforcement agencies awarded a £20 million ($25.2 million) contract for live facial recognition to three suppliers, including NEC.

Table of Contents

LFR gets yea from Scotland; Irish police delete 50% of biometric data

Tony Blair is not the only politician who endorses live facial recognition for policing. During a recent meeting between the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs and the Chair of the Scottish Police Authority, the secretary, Angela Constance, “indicated her support for the use of LFR to support investigations, noting it was ethical and proportional. The Chair also highlighted the benefit of its use for missing persons and committed to keeping the Cabinet Secretary up to date with developments.”

The case of police in Northern Ireland gives another angle on why people worry about facial recognition: data retention. The Irish News reports that the Police Service of Northern Ireland “authorizes around half of the requests it receives for biometric data it holds to be deleted.”

Assistant Chief Constable Anthony McNally says since 2012 a committee has been considering such requests when they are received, and that “in terms of deletions made, 117 out of 244 requests, 48 percent, were authorised for deletion since the inception of that group.”

A new Justice Bill proposes amending the law around the retention and destruction of fingerprints and DNA profiles, which McNally says will come with a significant cost.

“In previous versions of this Bill when the PSNI assessed them, I am reliably informed by my predecessors that in 2021, IT costs alone were reckoned to be circa £1 million,” he says. The assistant chief constable is aiming to establish a Justice Bill implementation group, and says there is also a program being led by the National Police Chief Council, looking at how AI can be used ethically.

McNally says “we will put perimeters around the use of artificial intelligence” and ensure that “where we look to introduce any software that will have an AI aspect to it, that there is appropriate governance and guard rails to ensure that we get the balance right between using it to help us solve crime, to support victims and witnesses, to also deal with hostile state actors who we all know are using AI for their own nefarious purposes.”