London Police to Launch Permanent Facial Recognition in Croydon

The Metropolitan (London) Police have announced they are switching from using CCTV cameras attached to police vans (therefore conspicuous), to installing a permanent live facial recognition (LFR) network in Croydon, south London – specifically in North End and London Road.

With this job set to be complete in June or July, the cameras will go on building or street posts, capturing images of faces of everyone walking past them, as the police search for suspected criminals.

These images are compared to those in existing databases.

The London police promise that this type of personal data will not be retained if there is no match, and that the cameras will be operational when “officers are deployed on the ground ready to respond to alerts.”

And they assert that the technology they are now using produces fewer errors stemming from racial bias, compared to other types of facial recognition.