Jason Perry’s council might not be allowing open discussion or questions on things that matter to the public, but Liberty, the widely respected human rights organisation, has got nearly 10,000 signatures on a petition that calls for more and better checks and balances over the use of Live Facial Recognition cameras.
The Met Police announced last month that it is to install permanent LFR cameras on North End and London Road, potentially scanning tens of thousands of people every single day, despite there being no established precedent for the use of such cameras in law.
With the Met under increasing financial pressures and preparing to axe thousands of back-office and frontline staff, going all Robocop appears to be their solution to their dilemma, without undue concern for the principles of law (innocent until proven guilty, anyone?) or public liberties.
Croydon is the first place in Britain to have the LFR cameras installed permanently, having been among the most used trial sites over the past two years. Only a very small percentage of all those scanned by the police were actually wanted for criminal offences. Most were only doing a bit of shopping at Marks and Sparks…
On Liberty’s website, they say, “We urgently need safeguards to protect us from abuse of this powerful tech.”
It’s not just the Met. Every police force in the country is using facial recognition technology which, in theory, enables them to ID and track any one of us.
Warning signs: the people of Croydon have been used as guinea pigs in a police state intrusion of their legal rights
When members of the public submitted questions to the council about LFR, seeking answers from Mayor Perry at tonight’s full council meeting at the Town Hall, their request was refused.
Liberty says: “After years of high-profile scandals involving violent, racist and sexist police forces… trust in officers is at an all-time low. This is dangerous tech and the government must prioritise putting strict measures in place to protect us all.”
No legislation has ever been tabled in Parliament, by the previous Conservative or current Labour government under “former human rights lawyer” Leir Starmer, to provide the kind of safeguards the public might reasonably expect in anything other than a police state.
The Liberty petition says that at the very least, we need laws to ensure:
- facial recognition is not used without independent sign-off from a judge
- no one is added to a police watchlist unless they are reasonably suspected of a serious crime
- facial recognition is never used to identify journalists and their sources, whistleblowers, protesters, and anyone in or around polling stations
Remarkably, the Croydon LFR cameras are being installed despite there being a precedent in case law against their use.
In 2020, Liberty client Ed Bridges won the world’s first legal challenge to police use of the technology.
In the Bridges case, a judge ruled that South Wales Police’s use of live facial recognition violated privacy rights and broke data protection and equality laws. This was partly due to the level of discretion officers had when choosing where to use the tech.
But despite this court victory, the government and police have forged ahead, “infecting every aspect of our lives with facial recognition that can be used to ID and track any one of us”, Liberty says.
It’s been used at football and rugby matches, at Formula 1, at music festivals, and even at the seaside. “It’s been used as a tool of intimidation at protests.
“And there simply isn’t any telling how and when police are using retroactive facial recognition to identify countless people in any image or footage they hold.
Liberty Investigates and i news discovered that Metropolitan Police computers had accessed a search engine called Pimeyes thousands of times. Pimeyes allows users to upload photos and identify where images of an individual appear elsewhere on the internet.
Liberty Investigates and the Telegraph also found that police forces have run hundreds of facial recognition searches against the passport database, which contains the images of 46million people.
Read more: Big Brother arrives in Croydon with Orwellian police cameras
Read more: Protests mount as Perry rejects petitions with 5,000 signatures
Read more: 1,700 jobs to be axed at ‘rapidly shrinking’ Metropolitan Police
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
- Inside Croydon has moved to Bluesky. Click here to join us there for latest updates and insights
Check out our archive of podcasts on Spotify, including our monthly news discussion panel show thingy, the Croydon Insider, and The Andrew Fisher Interview
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, as featured on Google News Showcase, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
I think Croydonians support these cameras, based on IC’s coverage, responses and my gut feelings.
That is a sweeping assertion based on a breathtaking lack of evidence.