Scotland Yard can keep using live facial recognition on people in London, say judges

London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has survived a legal challenge that attempted to curb its rollout of live facial recognition (LFR) technology across the capital. The challenge was brought against the Met by civil liberties organization Big Brother Watch, which was representing Shaun Thompson, an anti-knife crime …

[juul]

EU citizen

So, if the judges say only Londoners, how can Scotland Yard then distinguish an EU citizen form a Londoner?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: EU citizen

Or from any other country including non-Londoner UK citizens?

[Jedit]

"how can Scotland Yard then distinguish an EU citizen form a Londoner?"

The starting point is identifying that the suspect is black. From there, the Met can narrow it down to the black Londoner they want to fit up.

I don't think the Reg went far enough in analysing the numbers. If the "0.0003 percent" is not an error, then there were only 9-10 errors in the whole data set and at an error rate of 0.48% in a sample of 2077 LFR would be responsible for all of them. Even if it's a factor erroneously written as a percentage, though, that still represents LFR being 16 times less accurate than other forms of identification.

We also could use a number for how many of the (presumably) 936 people incorrectly recognised by other means than LR are black, to give context. Because if less than 80% of them are black then LFR is an inherently flawed system with a racial bias, and if 80% or more of them are black then the same thing must be said about the Met.

[b1k3rdude]

Re: "how can Scotland Yard then distinguish an EU citizen form a Londoner?"

The MP, racist, say it aint so...

[MonkeyJuice]

Re: "how can Scotland Yard then distinguish an EU citizen form a Londoner?"

"Overall, the system's performance remains in line with expectations."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "how can Scotland Yard then distinguish an EU citizen form a Londoner?"

That's in context rather darkly sarcastic..

[Jedit]

"That's in context rather darkly sarcastic"

On the subject of dark sarcasm: Roger Waters started adding a fourth part of Another Brick In The Wall to his live shows in 2011. It was about Jean Charles de Menezes being murdered by the Met.

[Doctor Syntax]

"Overall, the system's performance remains in line with expectations,"

Whose expectations? False positive rates need to be evaluated in the light of the impact on those affected. If the consequence is an arrest and prevention of the victims' going about their daily business, however urgent they should be financially supported in making a claim for false arrest against the officer concerned - or maybe the Commissioner - and libel against the equipment vendor who should have strict liability.

"and any demographic imbalances observed are not statistically significant,"

Unless the cameras are deployed in locations where 80% of the faces are black the figures do not support this claim.

What happened to the principle of policing by consent.

[Chris Fox]

Significance of statistical significance

No doubt the report is using the technical measure of "statistical significance" (where the "p-value" has to be less than 0.05, an arbitrary threshold, whose choice, and significance, is much debated). This technical measure does not align with the everyday meaning of "significance", and should not be used as proof of the importance or real-world impact, or otherwise, of the analysis.

In this particular case, a high p-value (i.e. low statistical significance) is probably just a consequence of the small volume of relevant data, combined with the precise framing of the "null hypothesis" used in the analysis.

The way the calculation works means that statistical significance invariable rises as more data is collected. It can also change if the null hypothesis, and its scope, are framed differently, or if a different threshold value is chosen.

The evident racial discrimination of facial-recognition systems, even if unintended, is clearly at odds with the 2012 Equality Act. IMHO, appealing to "p-values" to deflect from this is an abuse of statistics.

[Cav]

"and libel against the equipment vendor who should have strict liability"

Nonsense. The machine is just an identification tool. Would you urge claims against eye-witnesses who wrongly identify people as criminals? Those who cause harm are those in any official capacity who take action against an individual based on uncorroborated identification by a machine. They should face consequences if they knowingly rely on a system that is not 100% reliable.

[Doctor Syntax]

My comparison fluorescence microscopes, TLC, my colleagues electrophoesis, heated stage microscope/Cargill oil kit, GLC, IR spec and all the rest, nowadays DNA profiling systems were/are also only tools. But they damn well better turn out correct results 100% of the time because that's what was required of them.

[khjohansen]

"100% correct results"

... Joyce Gilchrist?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: "100% correct results"

The tools were fine (note independent examination of DNA, the problem was with those wielding them.

The Wikipedia article mentions hair examination. The FBI lab used to maintain they could make positive identifications. I never believed I could and neither did my colleagues. A match fell into a category of "yes, it looks the same but that doesn't say much". I had the strange experience of being cross examined by the counsel who called me* trying to get me to go further which I wouldn't; the defence eventually stepped in and objected.

This is what happened to the FBI's claims: https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-testimony-on-microscopic-hair-analysis-contained-errors-in-at-least-90-percent-of-cases-in-ongoing-review

* Counsel aren't supposed to cross examine their own witnesses unless the judge agrees they're hostile witnesses.

[LybsterRoy]

-- What happened to the principle of policing by consent. --

I think it wandered off when we allowed in a lot of people who did not consent to being policed.

[Doctor Syntax]

It was certainly the case in N Ireland. It was almost impossible to get a guilty verdict from a jury west of the Bann. The consequences are worth reflecting on.

Patients' money was being stolen. One of the nurses on the ward was suspected. We supplied a marking material (various components, some fluorescent, some not) and I gave evidence identifying them on the suspect. In addition,the thefts started when he joined the ward and stopped when he left.

The jury, who are there to represent the community, the community that also included the patients who were the victims, gave a not guilty verdict.

[frankvw]

"...not a problem under current human rights laws..."

And that's the real problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "...not a problem under current human rights laws..."

Yes the current human rights are a joke. They are stopping us getting things done.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "...not a problem under current human rights laws..."

Which ones? Be specific. Is it the right to free speech? Or freedom of assembly? Or the right to a fair trial? How about the ones that ban torture, discrimination and slavery?

I can see why you'd struggle with the right to freedom of thought. Those who object to that fundamental right are usually incapable of thinking.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Yes the current human rights are a joke. They are stopping us getting things done.

If you have a problem with human rights, put your money where your mouth is and opt out of them. Let's put a law in place to allow individuals to reject the right to privacy, the right to family life, the right to not be tortured. Lets see how many of you shouting that human rights are a problem are prepared to step the fuck up and opt out of them.

Oh! I see.

It's other people's human rights you have a problem with.

That's just you being a bigot. Think it through. If you can manage that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Statistical extracts

> And of the false positives, 80 percent of them were made on Black people.

Is that the correct summary value to extract? Surely the comparison needs to be of the percentage of false positives for each ethnic group.

For example, consider if there were 100 flagged white faces, with 2 false positives, and 1000 flagged black faces, with 8 false positives. Black faces would be 80% of the false positives. However, the false positive rate for white faces would be 2÷100 (2%) while the false positive rate for black faces would be 8÷1000 (0.8%). That indicates a different bias than is being suggested. The provided summary is unhelpful, without further information.

N.B. Simple statistics example - not an extensive list of ethnic groups. Also, it is a argument concerning the statistics and not suggesting, or explaining, that such a disparity of flagged faces between face groups.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Statistical extracts

See may comment above about unless they were deployed where 80% of the faces were black. This may, in fact, have been a possibility.

[Cav]

I don't have a problem with the technology itself. How does the error rate compare to human misidentification? The problem is the acceptence, by police, that it is 100% reliable. Anyone wrongly identified should be questioned, of course, but the assumption should always be that the machine might be wrong. If action is taken against an individual, based solely on the identification by a machine, whether that be by police or a store, then there should be financial consequences.

As for invasion of privacy: no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in public.

[R Soul]

no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in public

WTF!?!? Take your Stasi-style all-pervasive surveillance and sick it up your arse!

It is more than reasonable to expect to be able to walk down the street or cross the road or go into a shop or... without being tracked by PC Plod's snoopercams. Those who think otherwise can fuck off to North Korea or China.

[LybsterRoy]

Re: no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in public

I presume you also want to remove eyeballs from everyone (especially police) so they can't watch you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in public

Humans who want to watch me (why?) can go to court and get a search warrant. There's no equivalent of that for snoopercams and other automated forms of pervasive monitoring of the whole population. More so when it's being done on the off-chance the cops might be able to nick someone when there are no reasonable grounds for doing that and they couldn't get a search warrant.

[collinsl]

Re: no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in public

The police do not need a warrant to look at the face of someone walking down the street, that is an absurd claim to make. You have no right to privacy in a public space.

If you're that bothered by it then wear a face mask or bandana or balaclava or something when you're out in public.

[Christoph]

Re: no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in public

It is more than reasonable to expect to be able to walk down the street or cross the road or go into a shop or... without being tracked by PC Plod's snoopercams.

If you are a teenager, and especially if you are black, you can expect to be stopped and searched while walking down the street.

[FIA]

Re: no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in public

WTF!?!? Take your Stasi-style all-pervasive surveillance and sick it up your arse!

That's not what they said, they said the technology shouldn't be assumed to be infallible. People were incorrectly identified in the past. 50 years ago a mugshot would be a grainy black and white photo, 10 years ago it may be in colour. Technology does improve and there shouldn't be a barrier to using it correctly.

it's the 'using it correctly' that's important. (Which includes not using it until it can be proven to be unbiased or at least less fallible than humans).

It is more than reasonable to expect to be able to walk down the street or cross the road or go into a shop or... without being tracked by PC Plod's snoopercams. Those who think otherwise can fuck off to North Korea or China.

So people who don't share your world view should be deported? I smell a whiff of hypocrisy here.

[R Soul]

Re: no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in public

So people who don't share your world view should be deported? I smell a whiff of hypocrisy here.

I didn't suggest anyone should be deported. Just that those who are in favour of round-the-clock pervasive surveillance by the state should fuck off to a country which offers that. They can do that of their own free will. And there's no need to deport them.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have a problem with the technology itself.

Your should. Lots of problems.

Even if the technology always worked perfectly and never made mistakes - and we know it can't - you have to consider how it will get used and abused by the authorities. I for one don't want to live in a dystopia where everyone is monitored 24x7 and there's a Crapita-run YouTube channel showing everything everyone has ever done when they're outside. Or some PFY in the local nick uses the snoopercams to stalk an ex-boyfriend.

The assumption will always be the snoopercams are never wrong and there will be no way to challenge or disprove whatever "evidence" they produce. And remember too whoever supervises the snoopercams will have a vested interest in preventing anyone from questioning Big Brother's all-seeing eye.

[Doctor Syntax]

"I don't have a problem with the technology itself.

...

Anyone wrongly identified should be questioned, of course"

Let's run a thought experiment:

Cav is making his or her way through London and has a train to catch on the way to a job interview. He or she is flagged as a false positive, is stopped, taken for questioning, finger-printed, held until the misidentification is corrected and is eventually released, By now the train and interview are well in the past. Apologies on the lines of "I was held up by the Met." will scarcely be conducive to getting the interview rearranged even if the job hadn't been filled by another interviewee.

Is Cav still without a problem with the technology itself?

As many readers will know from my previous posts I spent many years in forensic science. One of my nightmares was that I wake up one day and find a breaking story that one of my old cases had become a miscarriage of justice. The efforts involved in avoiding mistakes was considerable because of the knowledge the mistake could seriously affect someone innocent. The accumulated stress of that eventually became too much.

The notion that we can airily accept this technology because it only makes mistakes that result in a few people being wrongly pulled in for questioning is anathema to me. Yes, I know the police will inevitably pull in the wrong people for questioning for various reasons but that is not an excuse for adding to those reasons.

[LybsterRoy]

You make a good case. What safeguards can you suggest apart from throwing the whole lot in the bin? Yes I know that's a popular option.

[Doctor Syntax]

None.

Holding the vendors responsible to the victims is the only thing I can suggest but it would probably have the effect of them throwing it in the bin.

The administrative mind always wants short cuts. That might be in the Home Office, the Met Police or anywhere else. In my view there are no short cuts to achieving justice.

I note there are some interesting downvotes here but whoever it is who's in favour of miscarriages of justice doesn't seem to want to identify themselves.

[Anonymous Coward]

No downvotes from me - I have a sigint background so I know how important accuracy is and how abhorrent the illegal use of facilities is (IMHO, admittedly sadly not always a shared opinion).

However, I will use continue to post anonymously - exactly because I agree with you :).

[Anonymous Coward]

Or how about

The system misidentifies a young Brazilian man as a suspect in a terrorist event. He's in south London and needs to travel to north-west London, so, carrying a rucksack equipment for doing electrical work, he heads down to a tube station. Let's say Stockwell. And the police are not going to let him into the tube, because they think he's a terrorist and the cameras say so. He passes the barrier, heads to the platform, and then gets shot by SO19.

And so ends the life of Jean-Charles de Menezes.

The police got a declaration of "this person left a house of interest", misinterpreted that as meaning "this is one of the terrorists from the attack", then behaved as though he was a terrorist. Clearly they didn't check after the first flagging of the man, so it doesn't matter if that first flag came from a person or an automated system- if they were conditioned to trust the source the result would be the same.

A simple misidentification- exactly the sort of thing the Met are trying to excuse- can have horrendous, even lethal, consequences. And that's assuming everyone with access to it is a 'good guy' doing their job.

[Anonymous Coward]

"no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in public."

But what does "privacy in public" mean? For example, I accept that when I am out in public people may watch me wander past , that I might be inadvertently caught in the background of various photos or videos, that passers-by might hear parts of conversations I might have with people I am with, and so forth. None of those - largely unavoidable - types of things would I regard as invading my privacy, largely because I fully expect all of them will be forgotten, and/or that no one is going to be systematically scrutinising the backgrounds of every tourist's photo collection in case I show up.

However, deliberately following, tracking, or recording me as I do any of those mundane things *would* be an invasion of privacy, as would checking who I am (or am not) by means of automated recording and application of algorithms. Even if (e.g.) some image or video is not retained, that does not mean there is not some logfile recording the outcome of the processing that acts as a violation of an expected privacy, even in the absence of the raw data fed into the algorithm,

[Anonymous Coward]

"Anyone wrongly identified should be questioned,"

Why? What "crime" have they supposedly committed? Haven't you heard of the presumption of innocence? It's only the cornerstone of our criminal justice system.

The last thing we should be doing is allow the police and the other branches of Starmer's goonery to have even more (consequence free) ways of harassing innocent people they dislike: The snoopercams say your library book is overdue. You're nicked! The starmercard database says you look like an illegal immigrant. You're nicked!

[LybsterRoy]

Wow - a reasonable comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Change of atire will help

How much is a burqa these days?

[R Soul]

Re: Change of atire will help

Not as much as the cost of getting beat up by Nigel's wannabe stormtroopers.

[Azamino]

Re: Change of atire will help

Most Reform fans get out of breath turning the telly on!

The folk firebombing Jewish premises on the other hand seem far more active. Maybe some kind of surveillance system would help catch and convict them? It could even be used to investigate racist thuggery too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Change of atire will help

It can't be that hard to catch those arseholes red-handed. It doesn't need or justify mass surveillance of the entire population.

[Dr Fidget]

Re: Change of atire will help

Just wear an FFP2 mask. Beware of Flu!

[VoiceOfTruth]

The injustice system of the UK

The judges love to treat the population like serfs. In all but the most egregious of cases, it is nanny knows best. They back the police time and time again.

Yet Pikachu face when the Metropolitan Police is found to be institutionally racist, institutionally sexist, institutionally homophobic, and institutionally corrupt.

That institutional corruption happens because the judges let the police get away with it.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: The injustice system of the UK

"The judges love to treat the population like serfs."

In the course of many years of watching court procedure and giving evidence myself that was not my experience.

In this case I wonder whether the false positive line was argued well enough or the requirements are not adequate. Maybe I should find tome to read the judgement.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: The injustice system of the UK

I've had a quick (it's tea time!) skim through. AFAICS it dealt with fairly narrow grounds on the legality of the Met's policy for deployment. These were the second and third of the original grounds for complaint. The first and second apparently related to the stopping of Shaun Thompson on suspicion of being his brother and were discharged with costs and compensation awarded to him. Because of that the information is limited but it sounds intriguing. The brother was on bail after being charged with attacking him. It's not clear why they should have stopped, as they thought based on the system, the brother. Being on bail doesn't sound sufficient unless it was a location where he would have been in breach of bail conditions.

The outcome partly seems to revolve on deployment being enabled by UK law which brings us back to whether the system should be allowed, and under what circumstances if it is.

[Flightmode]

Re: The injustice system of the UK

Kudos for bothering to go to the source material.

I wish more would put in the effort rather than just split-second reacting to what shows up on their screens before moving on to the next outrage.

[cd]

UK can have all the stupid tourists, smart ones won't be visiting.

[Dan 55]

I thought the stupid ones went to the US?

[Blackjack]

Cue arrests for having the wrong face and or being dark skinned to continue.

I don't wanna say that Nazis did that... but they did.

[Azamino]

The Summer of 2024 proves that anyone can be arrested and convicted when the police and the judiciary put their minds to it.

[Jimmy2Cows]

the identifications potentially prevented many more sex attacks against vulnerable children

Ah yes, won't somebody please think of the children. The classic refrain whenever they want to do something the public opposes.

And either they prevented attacks or they didn't. There's no "potentially". That's just more weasel words desperately trying to justify something intensely unpopular.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: the identifications potentially prevented many more sex attacks against vulnerable children

It sounds like conveniently unquantifiable line of argument. Convenient because not readily falsifiable. Popper would not have been impressed.

[Dan 55]

Re: the identifications potentially prevented many more sex attacks against vulnerable children

It also has a 100% success rate in preventing stampeding elephants rampaging through London since 2024. If you are against this then you must be for elephants charging through high streets and school playgrounds.

[Blackjack]

Re: the identifications potentially prevented many more sex attacks against vulnerable children

A very unfun fact, most abuse done to children is done by people children know, not strangers. That's why when a children goes missing or is killed parents and relatives are the first suspects.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the identifications potentially prevented many more sex attacks against vulnerable children

That must be of great comfort to the thousands of abused kids in Rotherham and similar.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the identifications potentially prevented many more sex attacks against vulnerable children

The moment someone pulls the 'children' or 'terrorist' card you have to start paying attention - it suggests they need to evoke your emotions to overlook a fallacy or problem somewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the identifications potentially prevented many more sex attacks against vulnerable children

And they'll accuse you of being a paedophile terrorist if you question their nonsense.

[andrewisaround]

Thompson's ID documents being refused as proof suggests to me that the police thinks the recognition system is infallible. And that's concerning in itself.

[andy gibson]

It would be interesting to see bodycam footage of the event. The Reg article says he "was compliant with the police, but my bank cards and passport weren't enough to convince the police the facial recognition tech was wrong"

But the BBC article just says:

"He said officers asked him for his fingerprints, but he refused, and he was let go only after about 30 minutes, after showing them a photo of his passport."

Like most instances of "two sides to a story", does the truth lie somewhere between?

[Anonymous Coward]

a photo of his passport

That would not be valid identification as a photo contains no security measures to prevent forgery. I haven't read the rest yet, but that one is a tad dodgy.

That said, I thought the post-war UK developed a bit of an allergy against the "Papieren, bitte" obligation to always carry valid ID?

[Anonymous Coward]

"That said, I thought the post-war UK developed a bit of an allergy against the "Papieren, bitte" obligation to always carry valid ID?"

That allergy seems to be fading. Our politicians are going out of their way to make sure of that and stealthily introduce pervasive state surveillance of everyone.

[ChoHag]

> low false positive rates of 0.0003 percent across a total of 3,147,436

Even if we take this figure rather than the far more disastrous 0.48%, that's still nearly 1000 people in whatever time period who had to try and persuade the filth that the computer should not have said no. And it is a question of when, not if, the machine's judgement is promoted past jury to executioner.

> And of the false positives, 80 percent of them were made on Black people.

Oh well that's alright then.

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

Orwell was inspired by the British bureaucracy combined with a fascist state and propaganda machine, was he not?

Is the UK really going to follow the US down the fascism shitter?

Or are they testing the technology for American deployment under Der Pumpkin Fuhrer? Kind of like the Israelis "test" all the weapons the Americans can't legally use under normal circumstances... Sure got their hands in a lot of political pockets on the defense front, the Americans. How far do you trust a nation that openly talks about "crippling" internationally-shipped F35s their "partner" nations receive? Especially given the closed source nature of the F35 program compared to the open-for-development offer Saab has made to Canada with the Grippen, where we could do our own maintenance and enhancement on the source code we'd receive as partners.

[R Soul]

"Is the UK really going to follow the US down the fascism shitter?"

We're far along that road. The Poundland Fuhrer is dangerously high in the opinion polls. Mainstream politicians outdo each other in authoritarian rhetoric. The government is pushing pervasive state surveillance: snoopercams, ID cards, DNA databases, ANPR systems everywhere, etc. Our current Home Secretary *wants* to see the whole population monitored everywhere all the time.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm just following in the footsteps of the previous Government."

Nige, probably.

[Anonymous Coward]

Orwell caught wind of Jeremy Bantham's design concept of the Panopticon, a place designed to manipulate behaviour by making people feel they were always under observation, and that is what inspired him to write 1984.

The reason I mention this is because of a very important fact that makes 1984 even more poignant:

Bantham's design was for a prison.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lazy policing via tech

Does not equate to good policing

[42656e4d203239]

Re: Lazy policing via tech

Trouble is good policing costs money... much more money than a technological crutch.

One could, if one were old and cynical like me, wonder if the systematic defunding of der plod, forcing their reliance on technological crutches, is deliberate so that, at some point, some "far thinking" PM could say "Ooops, the Police can't do their job. Here are a bunch of mates I have who will weed out the weaklings and smash in their doors"

I don't agree with Mr Waters' policitcs, or life choices, but he hit the nail right on the head with that song...

[Fara82Light]

Good

Good news.

[teebie]

"The question is no longer whether we should use Live Facial Recognition - it's why we would choose not to."

Because of the reason the case was raised? Because you don't want to arrest innocent people?

As always, the figures they give are for arrests made (including the mis-identified), and not for convictions.