Metropolitan Police hails facial recognition tech after record year for arrests

London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) says the hundreds of live facial recognition (LFR) deployments across the Capital last year led to 962 arrests, according to a new report on the controversial tech's use. The report [PDF] covered the period from September 2024 to September 2025, noting that from the 203 deployments, …

[Jedit]

80% of the false positives were black

Quelle fucking surprise. Of course the most institutionally racist police force in the UK loves it and thinks it's a great success.

[wolfetone]

The Met can't be racist. Some of their best computers are black.

[Snowy]

Re: 80% of the false positives were black

How large is the black population in areas where they were deployed?

[Blazde]

Re: 80% of the false positives were black

Why are they being deployed in areas with high black population when nation-wide around 80% of arrests and convictions are for white perps, and even in London that's around 45%?

( https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/ethnicity-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2022/statistics-on-ethnicity-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2022-html )

[Goodwin Sands]

Just waiting for an excuse ..

Doesn't matter how good or bad the technology is, or the morality of it, it's soon going to get rolled out far and wide. Home Sec ydy and Shadow Home Sec tdy, both singing it's praises, both seizing on the knifeman on the train as a reason to deploy and saying it's "to keep the public safe". Damn them both, and the people advising them.

[CountCadaver]

Re: Just waiting for an excuse ..

When the knife man on the train was A) white and B) from the early reports apparently undergoing a psychotic episode (likely due insufficient support from NHS mental health services (as they are ALWAYS the first to be slashed) and now the media will stereotype anyone with mental illness as a threat (vs reality that anyone with mental illness is more likely to be a victim of crime than commit one - due to societal prejudice and stigma)

But why would politicians miss a chance to build a totalitarian authoritarian dystopia? This is something that the Stasi / NKVD would have been proud to operate, ditto any similar agencies in right wing dystopias.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Just waiting for an excuse ..

On the strength of the nonsense in your first paragraph I wonder if you are having a psychotic episode!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Just waiting for an excuse ..

Are you deliberately ignoring reality? The person arrested and charged was very definitely NOT white (see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c05107088e1o) and this has been widely reported.

Lying about basic facts such as this panders directly to the Tommy Robinsons of this world who can then claim that it's all "Fake news".

[b1k3rdude]

All the fcking while not showing this data against the backdrop of other pre-face-rec. Or showing the actual numbers, or showing how many false positives/arrest there were as a result and how many times they were sued....

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

apples & oranges

there was no "pre-face-rec" situation where meatbag plods manually scanned a million faces from cctv cameras , and if there was you can bet the fail rate would be much higher

... cue the downvotes

[ParlezVousFranglais]

So while exact figures are hard to come by (laughably the courts stopped keeping centralised records due to "data quality" issues...), best guesses from various places estimate about 70,000 or so "failure to appear" notices get served each year by the courts, so that's broadly about 0.1% of the UK population. (Given obviously that some people get more than one, but also that your average 5 year old probably doesn't receive too many...)

The Met's figures have said that (even with cameras primarily deployed in "crime hotspots") it has only caught 550 of those from 3 million scans - so that's less than 0.02% - so in fact these facial recognition scans would only seem to be sending an "alert" for about a fifth of the people wanted for skipping court

That's hardly a success in my book...

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

well , given that your figures are national , and the articles figures are London , your results are not surprising

ldn 9m

uk 69 m

so your 0.02 * ( 69 / 9) = 0.15 . so , er , point proven

[ParlezVousFranglais]

Huh? Ok - so I am assuming that the FTA rate nationally and the one for just London are broadly the same, because, as I said, FTA rates are no longer published centrally - an earlier poster also called this out, the Met happily picks and chooses it's data without giving a complete picture. (Lies, damn lies & statistics etc...)

Chances are in fact, that in London, the FTA rate is higher than the national average, so probably greater than 0.1% of the population - the Facial Recognition "success" rate is for FTA's from the Met's own figures is no higher than 0.02%

I have no idea why you seem to be conflating bits from two different calculations?...

[Blazde]

about 70,000 or so "failure to appear" notices get served each year by the courts, so that's broadly about 0.1% of the UK population

The vast majority of those notices presumably aren't active for very long, certainly not a year, so you can't conclude 0.1% of the population at any one time is wanted for FTA.

But we could certainly question whether the vast majority of those 550 would otherwise simply have been picked up at known addresses hours or a few days later if they weren't already caught by LFR. Or even earlier if the officers visited those addresses instead of manning a camera.

[stiine]

Are we to assume that the 714777 face scans were deleted? Or saved for later w/ GPS and timestamp data?

[CountCadaver]

Cross referenced with the passport/DVLA/biometric photo databases and notes made about anyone who is under the purview of the DWP, Probation service etc.

Likely public transport be next (with link your face to make paying seamless and make delays a thing of the past, no cash or card only facepay) then NHS hospitals and schools (to get people at a young age where they can't refuse a face scan.)

With DWP access to bank accounts it's very soon going to be that you won't be able to fart without some apparatchik knowing about it

(Editor - are we still allowed to use words like Apparatchik or words like that also now forbidden? Honest query)

[Pascal Monett]

962 arrests

Hey, you can make 10,000 arrests.

What I'm interested in is how many of those arrested were convicted ?

Touting arrests as a success meter ignores the rest of the point of the procedure : taking the criminals off the streets. If your arrested end up back outside two days later, you've just wasted everyone's time, efforts and resources.

[Recluse]

Just asking for a “friend” …

Would be interested if anyone could clarify the legal basis for this (or as with ANPR, it sort of just happened)

Is one obliged to undergo facial scanning (i.e. if masked/hooded is one assumed to be an automatic target for further investigation) I’ve often wondered (as with knife arch scanning) whether in such circumstances one is presumed to be guilty until you prove your innocence.

And no, I don’t subscribe to the edict, “if you have nothing to hide” …

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Just asking for a “friend” …

https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/5682/toward-regulation-addressing-legal-void-facial-recognition-technology

[CountCadaver]

Re: Just asking for a “friend” …

Back to gaudy makeup?

How does this square with those who wear face masks for medical reasons - i.e. live infection / immunosuppressed?

Or those who wear facial coverings for religious reasons?

[DS999]

If the false positive rate

Was below 1% then it is better than I would have assumed/feared, at least.

The real question is what happens in those cases of a false positive. Does a human look at it and say "hmmm according to the biographical data this person is tall and skinny and the face match is short and fat so that's obviously wrong" or is their policy to skip directly to send out officers to arrest them and have a multi day process before you get released on a 'guilty until proven innocent' policy? And then have no procedures in place to prevent the exact same thing happening to you a week later.

It is how the false positives are treated and how negative that experience is that would need to be made more clear.

[Anonymous Coward]

Constable Savage approved

Clean up rates have improved:

Urinating in a public convenience

Loitering with intent to use a pedestrian crossing

Coughing without due care and attention

Wearing a loud shirt in a residential area during the hours of darkness

Walking around with an offensive wife

Being in possession of curly hair

[Anonymous Coward]

Points

1. I don't want to be catalogued & tracked because governments are not always benign and I'd argue that ours isn't right now.

2. It's one thing using recognition to aid investigation but they will try to use it as evidence for conviction because they're lazy and have KPIs.

3. The data will be abused for financial gain.

4. The system will get hacked or data passed to the wrong people.

[CountCadaver]

over 65s most supportive ?

Because those arrested were no one they knew and the papers they read support the concept as getting "wrong uns" off the streets

Also it wouldn't surprise me to find a large swathe of ex coppers (because "I wish we had had this when I was in the force) and exbnp supporters (because well the BNP was an openly racist party with links to openly neo nazi groups i.e. combat18) in that survey group alongside those of an authoritarian bent who are foaming at the mouth at the chance to "deal" with those they class as undesirable.

[ICL1900-G3]

Re: over 65s most supportive ?

I'm in my eighth decade and I find this deeply troubling, as do most, but not all, if my equally doddery friends. Careful where you point your sweeping statements.

[ICL1900-G3]

Re: over 65s most supportive ?

'if' should of course be 'of'...

[Anonymous Coward]

Big Picture - STASI At Work - Facial Recognition Is Just One STASI Tool....

- Comprehensive CCTV and facial recognition

- Digital ID

- Comprehensive car number plate scanning

- Comprehensive mobile phone scanning (two and three tower correlation)

- Comprehensive tracking of credit card use

- Comprehensive tracking of ATM use (with CCTV support)

- DVLC has direct access to the Home Office passport records

- Demands for Signal and Meta to provide "backdoors"

- Age verification

Do we need any more evidence that the STASI has arrived in Blighty?

Look at the list above.......is it REALLY because someone is "thinking about the children"???

....or about the COMPLETELY UNUSUAL arrest using facial recognition???

Absolutely NOT!!

P.S. ...and all the graduates of Wayne Couzins University (aka the Met Police) are using ALL OF THE ABOVE!!!!

Quote (William Burroughs): "The paranoid is a person who knows a little of what is going on."

[tiggity]

how legit

"none of the total arrests were officially deemed to be unnecessary"

Can't beat marking your own homework