Police use of facial recognition tech ruled unlawful by UK court
The use of automatic facial recognition (AFR) technology by a UK police force has been ruled unlawful by the Court of Appeal, following a legal challenge in south Wales.
The court found South Wales Police’s use of facial recognition technology breaches privacy rights, data protection laws and equality laws, bringing a long-running trial of the technology to a halt.
The appeal was brought against the police force by civil rights group Liberty and Cardiff resident Ed Bridges, 37, who said the use of AFR caused him distress.
The court also said the use of AFR was proportionate interference with human rights as the benefits outweighed the impact on Bridges. It ruled in favour of Liberty and Bridges on three of the five points in the appeal.
Bridges’ case was previously dismissed by London’s High Court in September, after two senior judges concluded use of the technology was not unlawful.
“This judgment is a major victory in the fight against discriminatory and oppressive facial recognition,” said Liberty lawyer Megan Goulding.
“The court has agreed that this dystopian surveillance tool violates our rights and threatens our liberties. Facial recognition discriminates against people of colour, and it is absolutely right that the Court found that South Wales Police had failed in their duty to investigate and avoid discrimination.
Automatic facial recognition technology maps faces in a crowd and records them so they can be checked against a watchlist of images, which would include suspects or missing persons.
The South Wales Police trials had been ongoing since 2017, at which time Bridges’ face was recorded while he was Christmas shopping. It was later matched to his image when he attended a peaceful anti-arms protest in 2018.
South Wales Police chief constable Matt Jukes said today: “The test of our ground-breaking use of this technology by the courts has been a welcome and important step in its development. I am confident this is a judgment that we can work with.”