Met police’s facial recognition technology ‘96% inaccurate’ The Met declined to reveal 2019 figures ahead of a future publication date

Facial recognition technology used by London’s Metropolitan Police incorrectly identified members of the public in 96 per cent of matches made between 2016 and 2018.

Biometric photos of members of the public were wrongly identified as potential criminals during eight incidents across the two-year period, Freedom of Information (FoI) requests have revealed.

In one incident, a 14 year-old black child in school uniform was stopped and fingerprinted by police after being misidentified by the technology, while a man was fined for objecting to his face being scanned on a separate occasion.

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The technology made incorrect matches in 100 per cent of cases during two deployments at Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, east London last year, according to civil liberties group Big Brother Watch.

The police force declined to release figures from the two instances it has been used during 2019, ahead of future planned publication, the group claimed.

The Met police is due to publish its decision on the future use of the technology, which could be adopted by forces across the UK, within the next few weeks.

MPs discussed facial recognition during a debate in the House of Commons on Wednesday, lead by Labour MP Darren Jones.

Mr Jones called for a “much better balance” between people’s privacy and their security, and said he looked forward to future announcements from Nick Hurd, Minister for Policing, in the summer.

Mr Hurd said he accepted the current system of retaining innocent people’s images in custody was unsatisfactory, saying it was “because there is an issue around the way different police databases work”.

The Administrative Court for Wales is set to hear the UK’s first challenge to police use of the technology later this month, spearheaded by former Lib Dem councillor and Cardiff resident Ed Bridges.

Mr Bridges believes his face was scanned by South Wales Police at both a peaceful anti-arms protest and while doing his Christmas shopping, and claims its use “violates [the] privacy rights of everyone within range of the cameras.

FoI requests found that within the first year of South Wales Police’s use of live facial recognition, ‘true matches’ were made with less than nine per cent accuracy – 91 per cent of ‘matches’ were misidentifications of other members of the public.

Human rights group Liberty, which is backing Mr Bridges’ claim, alleges the Met police used surveillance cameras twice during Notting Hill Carnival and Remembrance Sunday in 2017.

The force stored photographs of its incorrect matches for a year without their knowledge, creating a database of more than 2,400 innocent people, a report from Big Brother Watch claimed in May last year.

Facial recognition was publicly trialed in Soho, Picadilly Circus and Leicester Square during mid-December last year as part of a crackdown in crime around Westminster, using scanners positioned next to a uniformed police presence.

“We are aware that the accuracy of the Live Facial Recognition technology has been subject to some debate and challenge. However, it is important to note that when using the technology, further checks and balances are always carried out before police action is taken. The final decision to engage with an individual flagged by the technology is always made by a human,” a spokesperson for the Met police said.

“We understand that the public will rightly expect the use of this technology to be rigorously scrutinised and used lawfully. The technology itself is developing all the time and work is being done to ensure the technology is as accurate as possible.

“During the Met’s recent trial of the technology, eight arrests were made as a direct result of the flagging system for individuals wanted for violent offences. All alerts against the watch list are deleted after 30 days and faces in the video stream that do not generate an alert are deleted immediately.”

A full independent evaluation of the force’s use of the technology is currently underway, they added.