Dear John,

The UK’s largest police force is rolling out dangerous and oppressive facial recognition surveillance technology next month. More forces will follow unless we stop it now.

The Metropolitan Police announced plans today to track and monitor anyone in the capital. 

Facial recognition cameras scan everyone within range and make biometric maps of our faces – more like fingerprints than photographs – in a shocking violation of our privacy rights.

These are then compared to images on secretive police watchlists which can be of any of us whether we’re suspected of crime or not. The images can be sourced from anywhere – including our social media accounts. 

Aside from its Orwellian nature, this tech is particularly bad news if you’re a woman or a person of colour. 

It’s been known to misidentify these groups, meaning you’re more likely to be stopped, questioned and searched by the police if you’re a woman or if you’re BAME. And when the Met ‘trialled’ the tech, it often chose to use it in locations known to have high BAME or working-class populations, embedding discriminatory approaches to policing.

Police use of facial recognition in public must be banned now.

Don’t let this oppressive tech become normal. It’s not.  

An independent review of the Met’s trial use of this tech found it failed to consider the human rights impact and that its use was unlikely to pass the key legal test of being “necessary in a democratic society”.

But it’s rolling out the tech anyway.

Join the fight against facial recognition technology. Sign the petition to ban police use of facial recognition tech in public.

Thank you for your support.

Martha Spurrier
Director

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