Technology Faces Allegations of Bias Amid Legal Challenge
The Metropolitan Police are under increasing pressure to abandon its intention to roll out live facial recognition (LFR) technology at next weekend’s Notting Hill Carnival, after it was accused of being racially biased and legally questionable.
In a letter to Commissioner Mark Rowley, 11 anti-racist and civil liberty groups claimed that deploying LFR at a festival of African-Caribbean culture would “exacerbate concerns about abuses of state power and racial discrimination.” Organizations such as Liberty, Human Rights Watch, Big Brother Watch, and the Runnymede Trust cautioned that the technology is still less accurate among women and people of colour.
Their appeal comes as there is a wider deployment of facial recognition vans to nine police forces in England and Wales, prompting fresh controversy over surveillance and discrimination in the police force.
Carnival Under Surveillance Spotlight
The Met last month confirmed that LFR cameras will be put on entry and exit points to the two-day carnival, which draws almost two million individuals every August bank holiday. The police say the technology will be deployed for identifying people suspected of serious crimes like knife crime and sexual offences, and missing persons.
But campaigners claim the ruling disproportionately affects the same community that the carnival is intended to honour. “The Met has been found institutionally racist by Baroness Casey’s independent review,” the letter says, and that confidence in the force is already badly damaged by discriminatory policing.
The row intensified further when Shaun Thompson, an anti-knife crime Black British campaigner, brought a legal action. Thompson was wrongly identified by LFR, arrested, and coerced into giving prints on his way back after volunteering with a youth campaign group. He described the experience as “stop and search on steroids.”
Reports Highlight Bias in Technology
Complaints about racial bias in face recognition systems are not recent. A 2018 study by MIT Media Lab discovered error rates of up to 35% for dark-skinned women and less than 1% for light-skinned men. Likewise, the independent analysis by the National Physical Laboratory of the Met’s own NeoFace system discovered discrepancies at lower accuracy thresholds, especially impacting Black women and men.
Regardless of this, police are under no legal requirement to use the system at higher, less discriminatory settings. Critics say this leaves communities at risk of repeated misidentification and disproportionate targeting.
Organizations such as Privacy International, Access Now, StopWatch, and Race Equality First added their names to the signatories, adding that giving police the ability to “self-regulate” LFR use risks unbridled abuses.
Met Defends Use of Technology
The Met has stood by its move, insisting it will only use the system on settings that have been shown to be unbiased by ethnicity and gender. Leading this year’s carnival policing operation is Deputy Assistant Commissioner Matt Ward, who stated the force acknowledges persisting “misconceptions” over LFR among Black and minority communities but insisted that it remains an “effective tool.
According to the Met, LFR has contributed to more than 1,000 arrests in London since the start of 2024, including suspects wanted for rape, domestic abuse, knife crime, and breaches of sex offender conditions.
Ward continued: “Independent testing has determined that at the levels the Met uses, the system is balanced and accurate. We are aware that there are concerns, but we intend to use it responsibly in order to keep the public safe.”
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Increasing Political Scrutiny
It has also attracted attention from senior politicians. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper recently promised to create a new legal framework for the use of LFR, claiming it would be used “in a targeted way” against serious criminals.
Nevertheless, campaigners remain suspicious. The revelation Welsh police once used LFR to monitor ticket touts only heightened fears the technology will be abused at the carnival.
With 7,000 officers tasked with policing the event every day, community leaders claim the carnival could be eclipsed by oppressive monitoring. Critics warn this could destroy the carnival’s spirit as a grassroots celebration of culture and hardiness.
With the August bank holiday just around the corner, the battle between public safety needs and civil liberty issues promises to provide one of the most watched police operations of the year.
