Source: The Guardian

Britain’s biometrics commissioners warn national oversight of AI-powered live facial recognition is trailing the rapid spread of the technology, with Professor William Webster saying legislation is moving too slowly while the Metropolitan police have almost doubled the number of faces they scan in London and have scanned more than 1.7 million faces so far this year. Dr Brian Plastow described a “patchwork legal framework” across the UK and said forces in England and Wales were “really just marking their own homework,” while both commissioners called for new laws and a dedicated regulator to prevent misuse. Several oversight bodies exist, including the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the Home Office is considering a national legal framework as it promotes facial recognition as a major tool for finding criminals.

Concerns about harms and limited scrutiny are illustrated by multiple accounts of people wrongly identified by shop and police systems, including a case in February in which a man was arrested after face‑scanning software confused him with another person of south Asian heritage. Members of the public said being flagged by retail AI cameras left them feeling “guilty until proven innocent,” and a whistleblower and a former security guard alleged malicious tagging and misuse of shop-based systems, claims Facewatch’s CEO denies. The ICO’s planned audit of the Met’s use of AI-powered face scanning — scheduled for October — was postponed at the Met’s request, citing reasons including a legal challenge to its policy (about which a court ruled in the Met’s favour last week), officers’ leave and policing burdens, and the ICO accepted the delay so the investigation is no longer certain to go ahead. Polling by Opinium showed significant public concern, with nearly a third opposing retailer use and 62% worrying about wrongful trouble caused by the technology.