Policing Minister Urges Forces to Double Facial Recognition Searches

Policing Minister Chris Philp hosts a roundtable in Downing Street, London, on Oct. 23, 2023. Aaron Chown/PA

Police forces in England and Wales have been urged to double the number of facial recognition searches in a government drive for using artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

In a letter to police chiefs, policing minister Chris Philp encouraged police forces to routinely check suspects’ images against the Police National Database (PND) using the retrospective facial recognition technology.

It comes as the UK is about to host the first major global AI summit next week when government and industry leaders will discuss guardrails needed to mitigate the risks that come with the emerging technology.

In his letter, Mr. Philp touted “hugely” advanced algorithms that have emerged in recent months for retrospective facial recognition, saying “even blurred, or partially obscured images can now be successfully matched against custody images, leading to arrests.”

The minister said every police force has been using the technology “to some extent” but its use is “very variable between forces and could be greatly increased.”

He urged forces to double the number of searches by May 2024 so they exceed 200,000 across England and Wales.

The minister has also voiced his support for live facial recognition, which stream CCTV footage in real time to cross check pedestrians’ faces with police databases.

He said recent deployments of the technology have led to “arrests that would otherwise have been impossible.”

A van being used by the Metropolitan Police as part of their facial recognition operation in central London, on May 6, 2023. Will Edwards/AFP via Getty Images

Live facial recognition has led to successful arrests of suspects during trials in England and Wales, but the trials have also been mired in controversy and debates around privacy, public consent, and system inaccuracies and bias such as gender or racial bias.

The Home Office said on Sunday that police will put up notices in areas where they will be using live facial recognition to ensure transparency and a person’s data is “deleted immediately and automatically” if they don’t match someone on a watchlist.

The department also sought to assure the public about the accuracy of the evolving technology by citing research data and said there had not been any false alerts this year over 25 deployments.

Writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday, civil liberty campaigner Big Brother Watch said, “We did not sign up to be turned into walking ID cards by facial recognition cameras.”

The government is positioning the UK as a world leader for AI technologies, while Chancellor Jeremy Hunt hopes AI can help boost public sector productivity, reduce the need to hire more doctors, teachers, and police officers, and in turn offload some of the tax burdens.

However, the new technologies come with concerns and controversies, particularly around live facial recognition, which is associated with police states such as communist China.

Publishing a shopping list in August of facial recognition technologies that it wants industry to provide, the Home Office stressed that it was not looking for capabilities beyond identification, such as iris detection, lie detection, or analysis of how someone walks, which are known to be used in China’s mass-surveillance programme, but the push for facial recognition is still raising concerns.

An undated image showing two activists holding up placards and wearing masks of policing minister Chris Philp (L) and Home Secretary Suella Braverman (R) outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London. Big Brother Watch

Earlier this month, 65 parliamentarians and 31 charities and civil rights groups called for the use of live facial recognition surveillance to be “immediately stopped” after Mr. Philp announced plans the make UK passport photographs searchable by police officers using facial recognition technology.

Their joint statement said they had “differing views about live facial recognition surveillance,  ranging from serious concerns about its incompatibility with human rights, to the potential for discriminatory impact, the lack of safeguards, the lack of an evidence base, an unproven case of necessity or proportionality, the lack of a sufficient legal basis, the lack of parliamentary consideration, and the lack of a democratic mandate.”

Chris Summers contributed to this report.