Technology used for first time since a landmark court case two years ago
FACIAL recognition cameras were used in Cardiff City Centre last Saturday for the first time since South Wales Police lost a Court of Appeal case two years ago.
The original case, the world’s first legal challenge against police use of facial recognition technology, arose after a Cardiff resident complained that his privacy had been compromised after he was recorded by one of the cameras.
The Court of Appeal judged in August 2020 that police use of facial recognition technology had breached privacy rights, data protection laws and equality laws in recording.
Two years on from the court’s ruling SWP have begun public trials again, stating that more work has been done on the technology.
Facial recognition vans were spotted outside McDonalds on Queen Street on Saturday, filming crowds gathering ahead of Wales’ Six Nations home game against Italy.
South Wales Police said: “As part of the force’s response to the judgment, a number of trial deployments will take place in Cardiff city centre to test the system to ensure there is no risk of breaching equality requirements through bias or discrimination.”
Assistant Chief Constable Mark Travis said: “The legal challenge to our use of this ground-breaking technology through the courts has enabled us to ensure that its use is responsible, proportionate and fair.
“The whole aim of using facial recognition technology is to keep the public safe and assist us in identifying serious offenders in order to protect our communities from individuals who pose significant risks.
“I believe the public will continue to support our use of all the available methods and technology to keep them safe, providing what we do is legitimate and proportionate.”
Cardiff residents were divided in their opinions about the technology.
A 37-year-old woman, from Llandaff, who asked the Cardiffian not to use her name, said: “I’ve worked in security for 15 years.
“I’ve got no problem with it, your image is scanned against a database and deleted seconds later provided you aren’t on their hit list.
“If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s about protecting the public and catching criminals.”
Matthew Sheppard, 50, from Fairwater said: “The problem is it sounds great, but it’s not always used for good. Such technology is too easy to misuse.
“While catching criminals is good, there’s always the possibility of misuse.”
Liberty Human Rights, the advocacy group who won the original case on the behalf of the Cardiff resident who complained, said that facial recognition technology is dangerous.
Emmanuelle Andrews, Policy and Campaigns Manager at Liberty, said: ““We should all be able to feel safe and be able to go about our lives freely. Facial recognition undermines these ideals.
“This technology destroys privacy, and entrenches patterns of discrimination and the over-policing of people of colour.
“The underlying problem with use of this technology remains that facial recognition does not make people safer, as it still collects sensitive biometric data from everyone that passes through the camera, fundamentally changing the way we move through public spaces. The safest, and only, thing to do with facial recognition is to ban it.”
