A new fleet of facial recognition vans has been rolled out by seven more police forces including in the Thames Valley.
This comes despite the Metropolitan Police releasing a report last month which said that from September 2024 to September 2025, the software had a false alert rate of 0.0003% from more than three million scans.
In light of this, Nathan Seymour-Hyde, crime partner at law firm Reeds Solicitors LLP, said: “Many of the widespread concerns about facial recognition technology have been addressed by the safeguards now in place – including advance publication of deployments, clear public signage, rapid deletion of non-matches, and the requirement for officers to manually verify any alert before action is taken.
“One would hope that such verification occurs before any arrest or search, as false arrests will naturally give rise to complaints and civil legal action in some cases.
“However, concern also lies in transparency and oversight: the public must have confidence that the technology is used proportionately, accurately, and with proper independent scrutiny.
“Without clear statutory limits, there remains a real risk of mission creep – a gradual expansion of its use beyond serious criminality into broader areas of policing.”
