Friday, December 05, 2025
Labour's march towards authoritarianism
They are proposing a 10-week consultation that will ask for views on how the technology should be regulated and how to protect people’s privacy, as well as creating a regulator to oversee police use of facial recognition, biometrics and other tools:
Policing minister Sarah Jones described facial recognition as the “biggest breakthrough for catching criminals since DNA matching” saying that it has already helped catch thousands of criminals.
“We will expand its use so that forces can put more criminals behind bars and tackle crime in their communities,” she said.
According to the Home Office, the Metropolitan Police made 1,300 arrests using facial recognition over the last two years, and found more than 100 registered sex offenders breaching their licence conditions.
But the technology has faced criticism, with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) describing the Met Police’s policy on use of live facial recognition technology as “unlawful”, earlier this year.
The equalities watchdog said the rules and safeguards around the UK’s biggest police force’s use of the technology “fall short” and could have a “chilling effect” on individuals’ rights when used at protests.
Other organisations also have doubts about this roll-out:
Reacting to the consultation, human rights organisation Liberty said the Government should halt the roll-out of the technology and introduce strict safeguards, including for independent sign-off before it is used and at least 14 days’ notice to the public when live facial recognition will be active.
It also called for police to only use facial recognition to prevent an imminent threat to life or people’s safety, search for suspects of serious criminal offences or missing people and victims of abduction and human trafficking.
Liberty director, Akiko Hart, added: “The public is finally getting a chance to have its say on this surveillance tech, but it’s disappointing the Home Office is starting a consultation with a pledge to ramp up its use.”
Silkie Carlo, director of civil liberty group Big Brother Watch, said: “For our streets to be safer, the Government need to focus their resources on real criminals rather than spending public money turning the country into an open prison with surveillance of the general population.
“Facial recognition surveillance is out of control, with the police’s own records showing over seven million innocent people in England and Wales have been scanned by police facial recognition cameras in the past year alone.”
Mass surveillance as a matter of routine, coupled with a growing database of images is not a good look in a democratic society. That is why it is important that this technology is tightly regulated, open to scrutiny by the public, and that the ad hoc expansion of facial recognition cameras by police forces is halted in the meantime.
The biggest concern is that this latest announcememt comes on the back of proposals to introduce compulsory digital ID cards and to do away with jury trials. Put them all together and it is beginning to look like the UK is turning into a much more authoritarian state.
