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Civil rights groups challenge the Met Commissioner on the planned use of live facial recognition at Notting Hill Carnival
A number of leading rights and racial justice groups have written to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, calling for him to reverse the decision to deploy Live Facial Recognition technology at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival.
The letter, which was also sent to London’s Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime Kaya Comer-Schwartz, was signed by Big Brother Watch, Human Rights Watch, Liberty, The Runnymede Trust, Race on the Agenda, Privacy International, Statewatch, Open Rights Group, Stop Watch, Race Equality First and Access Now.
The organisations claim that the technology is “a mass surveillance tool that treats all Carnival-goers as potential suspects” and states that this decision “will only exacerbate concerns about abuses of state power and racial discrimination within your force”.
The letter notes that the Notting Hill Carnival is an event that specifically celebrates the British African Caribbean community. However, the Metropolitan Police have decided to use a technology with a well-documented history of inaccurate outcomes and racial bias.
An independent report found by the National Physical Laboratory found that the LFR technology deployed by the MPS (‘NeoFace’) is less accurate for women and people of colour when deployed at certain settings. The report’s author, Dr Tony Mansfield, acknowledged that “if the system is run at low and easy thresholds, the system starts showing a bias against black males and females combined.”8 While we acknowledge that the MPS is not currently deploying this technology at these settings, we remain concerned that there is no legal obligation for your force to do so and by the continued investment in a technology with such significant discriminatory potential.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee last year expressed concern at “the increased use by police forces of facial recognition technology to monitor peaceful gatherings” in the UK.7 Indeed, the MPS is currently facing a legal challenge over its use of LFR. Shaun Thompson, a 39-year-old Black Londoner, is bringing a judicial review after he was misidentified by LFR in London and wrongly flagged as a criminal. Mr Thompson was returning from volunteering with Street Fathers, a youth advocacy and anti-violence community organisation, when he was surrounded by officers and held for half an hour. He has likened the discriminatory impacts of LFR to “stop and search on steroids”.
