High Court challenge over Met Police’s use of live facial recognition thrown out
Two people have lost a High Court challenge against the Metropolitan Police over its use of live facial recognition technology in London.
Youth worker Shaun Thompson and Silkie Carlo, from campaign group Big Brother Watch, brought the claim over concerns that facial recognition could be used arbitrarily or in a discriminatory way. Mr Thompson, who volunteers with young people affected by violence, was misidentified by the technology. Lawyers for the pair told a hearing earlier this year that facial recognition is “similar to a DNA profile” and that plans to mount permanent installations in the capital would make it “impossible” for Londoners to travel without their biometric data being taken and processed. Scotland Yard defended the legal challenge, brought over its live facial recognition policy from September 2024, telling the court in London that the policy was lawful. Lord Justice Holgate and Mrs Justice Farbey said in a judgment on Tuesday: “The policy provides the claimants with an adequate indication of the circumstances in which LFR will be used and enables them to foresee, to a degree that is reasonable in the circumstances, the consequences of travelling in an area of London where LFR is in use.” The judges also said that Mr Thompson and Ms Carlo’s human rights “have not been breached”. The Met Police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, welcomed the decision, while Ms Carlo and Mr Thompson have said that they will seek to appeal. The ruling comes after the Government previously defended plans to expand the use of facial recognition across England and Wales. Plans set out by the Home Office in January will increase the number of vans from 10 to 50 and make them available to all forces across the two nations. Separate Freedom of Information disclosures to the Press Association suggest gaps in the force’s oversight of the technology. In its response to the request, the Met said it has no system to identify complaints specifically relating to facial recognition and cannot readily track the outcomes of arrests made following facial recognition matches. This includes whether they result in charges or convictions, without examining individual case files across multiple systems. Dan Squires KC, for Mr Thompson and Ms Carlo, told a hearing in January that the force used facial recognition 231 times last year and scanned around four million faces, scanning more than 50,000 faces in four-and-a-half hours in Oxford Circus in December. He said the technology turns people’s facial characteristics into coded data, which is then compared with people on a “watch list”. Anya Proops KC, for the Met, said in written submissions that locating individuals wanted by police was “akin to looking for stray needles in an enormous, exceptionally dense haystack”, and that facial recognition can “spot the ‘needles’ in a way that officers simply cannot”. She continued that in 2025, up until September 18, officers made 801 arrests “specifically as a result of LFR” and that the intrusion into the public’s privacy is “only minimal”, adding that data taken from people not on a watchlist “is deleted a fraction of a second after it is created”. In their 47-page ruling, Lord Justice Holgate and Mrs Justice Farbey said: “Any intrusion to which the claimants are exposed by the deployment of LFR is not directed at them in the sense that, save for unintended errors, the Metropolitan Police has no interest in their biometrics or in engaging with them.” They also said that the “risk and potential scope for discrimination on grounds of race was no more than faintly asserted” at the hearing, adding: “We are not able to accept, on the thin submissions advanced before us, that concerns about discrimination infect the legality of the policy.” Sir Mark said the judgment was a “significant and important victory for public safety” and that LFR “is not secret surveillance”. He said: “The courts have confirmed our approach is lawful. The public supports its use. It works. And it helps us keep Londoners safe. “The question is no longer whether we should use live facial recognition – it’s why we would choose not to.” Speaking to the Press Association at Charing Cross police station following the ruling, he said that “nobody has been arrested” as a result of misidentification through LFR. He said: “It’s very safe and if you’re nervous about your civil liberties, it’s important you know that your image is deleted in less than a second after you’ve walked past the camera.” Ms Carlo said the judgment was “disappointing” but that the legal battle was “far from over”, with Big Brother Watch crowdfunding for a bid to challenge the ruling. She said: “There has never been a more important time to stand up for the public’s rights against dystopian surveillance tech that turns us into walking ID cards and treats us like a nation of suspects.” Mr Thompson said that LFR was “like stop and search on steroids” and that he would seek to challenge the ruling to “protect Londoners” from “mass surveillance”.
Published: by Radio NewsHub