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Eleven civil\u2011liberties and anti\u2011racist groups have written to the Metropolitan Police commissioner demanding the force abandon plans to deploy live facial recognition at next weekend\u2019s Notting Hill Carnival, arguing the technology is prone to racial and gender bias, has already prompted a High Court challenge and risks deepening mistrust in policing of the African\u2011Caribbean community.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Eleven civil\u2011liberties and anti\u2011racist organisations have written to the Metropolitan Police commissioner urging him to abandon plans to deploy live facial recognition (LFR) at next weekend\u2019s Notting Hill Carnival, warning the technology is \u201criven with racial bias\u201d and that its use is already subject to a high\u2011court legal challenge. Campaigners say deploying instant face\u2011matching cameras at an event that celebrates the African\u2011Caribbean community will deepen mistrust of policing and risk reproducing discriminatory harms. <\/p>\n
The open letter, signed by groups including the Runnymede Trust, Liberty, Big Brother Watch, Race on the Agenda and Human Rights Watch, argues LFR is less accurate for women and people of colour and that using it at Carnival \u201cunfairly targets the community that carnival exists to celebrate\u201d. The signatories point to the Met\u2019s troubled history on race \u2014 including Baroness Casey\u2019s finding of institutional racism \u2014 as a reason why introducing intrusive biometric surveillance at such an event is particularly fraught. <\/p>\n
Independent technical studies are central to the campaigners\u2019 case. The National Physical Laboratory (NPL), commissioned to test operational systems used by the Met and South Wales Police, found that some algorithm settings produced statistically indistinguishable performance across demographic groups, but that lowering the face\u2011match threshold increased false positives and produced bias against Black people. Earlier academic work \u2014 notably the 2018 Gender Shades project \u2014 also demonstrated large disparities in error rates by gender and skin tone, with the worst performance seen for darker\u2011skinned women while light\u2011skinned men experienced far lower error rates. Campaigners say those findings together show the accuracy of LFR is highly sensitive to how police configure and operate the system. <\/p>\n
The prospect of misidentification is not hypothetical. A High Court challenge brought by Shaun Thompson and publicised by campaigners recounts his account of being stopped, detained for about half an hour and asked for fingerprints after an LFR alert, despite producing identity documents. Thompson has described the experience as akin to \u201cstop and search on steroids\u201d, and Big Brother Watch framed the legal action as part of a broader concern over discriminatory impacts and a lack of robust safeguards. <\/p>\n
The Met has defended its operational plans. In a police statement the force said LFR cameras will be sited on the approaches to and exits from the carnival, outside the event\u2019s formal boundaries, and used to identify missing persons, people wanted by the courts and those subject to sexual harm prevention orders. The force points to internal procedures intended to limit harms \u2014 including human review of any LFR alert and the deletion of biometric data where no match is found \u2014 and to arrest figures it attributes to the technology. Matt Ward, the deputy assistant commissioner overseeing policing for Carnival, told the Guardian that LFR is \u201ca reliable and effective tool\u201d and stressed that independent testing had found the system accurate at the thresholds the Met uses, while acknowledging public misconceptions about the technology in Black and other minority ethnic communities. <\/p>\n
That operational defence sits against a wider government push to expand LFR. The Home Office has announced a neighbourhood policing programme that rolls out additional LFR vans to several forces, describing the tool as an intelligence\u2011led means of identifying high\u2011harm offenders and promising work on legal safeguards and oversight. The Home Secretary has signalled an intention to draw up a new legal framework for the technology, but campaigners say the promise of future rules does not address current harms or the absence of statutory limits on how and where police may deploy biometric surveillance. <\/p>\n
Campaigners also point to examples of past police uses that appear to have strayed from the most serious\u2011offender framing: civil society groups have raised concerns about LFR being used on occasions such as to target ticket touts, and independent testing shows thresholds and operational settings materially affect who is misidentified. On the ground at Carnival, the Met will deploy screening arches at busy entry points and reserve stop\u2011and\u2011search powers; critics warn those powers combined with LFR could amplify disproportionate enforcement in narrow streets where large crowds gather. <\/p>\n
With an estimated 2 million people attending the two\u2011day event and around 7,000 police officers and staff due to be deployed each day, the controversy is likely to intensify in the coming days. Campaigners have urged the commissioner to halt any deployment until the High Court has ruled and until clearer statutory safeguards are in place; meanwhile the Met says it will proceed with the operation it believes balances public safety with procedural protections. The outcome of the legal challenge and any ministerial moves on rules for LFR will determine whether that balance holds or is reset by the courts or Parliament. <\/p>\n