Met Police begins deploying live facial recognition cameras in Stratford

Met Police announced last month that live facial recognition would be permanently integrated into everyday policing

The Metropolitan Police has started deploying live facial recognition camera technology in Stratford today.

According to the police, the technology will aid the fight against serious crime in London, while helping to find missing children and vulnerable people.

"The Met will deploy Live Facial Recognition on Tuesday 11 February at key locations in #Stratford between 11.00 - 16.30," the police tweeted on Monday.

"This is part of a proactive policing operation to focus on violent and other serious offences."

Live facial recognition can help police identify wanted criminals by matching live pictures with digital images. After a camera is installed at specific locations, it starts capturing the images of all the people passing in front of it. The captured images are then streamed to a live facial recognition system, which compares them with the images of offenders sought by the police. If a match is found, the system generates an alert for the police officer present on the scene.

The Met Police insists that it has fully tested the system using police staff. The results suggested that 70 per cent of the wanted offenders would be identified

The officer compares the camera image with the person they see and then takes a decision whether to approach the person or not. The officer can ask suspected individual to verify their identity, and will arrest them if they are on the watch list.

Last month, the Met announced that the LFR technology had moved past the trial stage and was ready to be permanently integrated into everyday policing.

It disclosed that LFR cameras would be deployed at locations based on intelligence where serious offenders might be found.

The use of facial recognition technology in the UK has previously been limited only to small trials or events like football matches and concerts. However, such deployments were widely criticised by privacy campaigners, who described the move a serious threat to civil liberties.

The system generated a false positive only for one individual out of 1,000

Privacy campaigning group Big Brother Watch said last month that live facial recognition technology is highly inaccurate and the decision to deploy it in London "instantly stains the new government's human rights record".

In the past, data from one trial had suggested that as many as 81 per cent of "matches" produced by the cameras were incorrect.

However, the Met Police insists that it has fully tested the system using police staff. The results suggested that 70 per cent of the wanted offenders would be identified as they walk past the cameras. The police added that the system generated a false positive only for one individual out of 1,000. Even so, that could result in the erroneous apprehension of a number of people in Stratford this afternoon, given the high volume of people the cameras will be 'spotting'.

"We are using a tried-and-tested technology, and have taken a considered and transparent approach in order to arrive at this point," Assistant Commissioner Nick Ephgrave said last month.

"Similar technology is already widely used across the UK in the private sector. Ours has been trialled by our technology teams for use in an operational policing environment."