British Police To Improve Facial Recognition Technology To Arrest Criminals

JAKARTA - The use of facial recognition technology will be expanded across the UK police to help track down criminals, the government said in a statement on Thursday, proposing the creation of a new agency to oversee its use.

The technology has been used by the London Metropolitan Police (The Met), which has made 1,300 arrests using facial recognition in the past two years, including rapists, perpetrators of domestic violence, and perpetrators of violent crimes, as well as finding more than 100 perpetrators of sexual crimes who violated their licensing provisions.

However, civil rights group Big Brother Watch called the plan to expand facial recognition a serious threat to privacy.

"The law in Europe protects the public from mass surveillance of facial recognition, but Britain is an exception in the world of democracy with the public now being monitored by these cameras and treated like suspects almost every day," the group said.

The Met used live facial recognition at major events such as football matches and Carnival Notting Hill to identify people on its watch list.

The technology also helps police in criminal investigations search for footage from cell phones, video door rings, and CCTV by comparing it to the image database of people arrested.

British Police Minister Sarah Jones said facial recognition was the biggest breakthrough in catching criminals since DNA matching.

"This technology has helped capture thousands of dangerous criminals from our streets and has great potential to strengthen the way the police keep our security," he said.

"We will expand its use so that the police can imprison more criminals and deal with crimes in their communities," Jones said.

Big Brother Watch said surveillance was out of control, with more than 7 million people in England and Wales being scanned by facial recognition cameras last year, according to police records.

"Direct facial recognition could be the end of privacy as we know it," Big Brother Watch Director Silkie Carlo said, adding that with the possibility of the government implementing a mandatory identity card with facial biometrics, "we are heading towards an authoritarian surveillance country that will see Orwell rolling around in his grave".

The UK government said it would launch consultations for 10 weeks to review the benefits of the technology and the necessary protective measures to ensure public trust, including privacy protection.

The government also proposes the establishment of a single agency to monitor and regulate the use of facial recognition technology and similar technologies by police.