London Police Amp Up Surveillance With Real-Time Facial Recognition
London’s police department said Friday that it would begin using facial recognition technology in the city to identify people off the street in real time with video cameras, adopting a level of surveillance that is rare outside of China.
The decision is a major development in the use of a technology that has set off a worldwide debate about the balance between security and privacy. Police departments contend that the software gives them a technological edge to catch criminals that may otherwise avoid detection. Critics say the technology is an invasion of privacy and is being rolled out without adequate public discussion.
Britain has been at the forefront of the debate. In a country where CCTV cameras line the streets, police surveillance has traditionally been more accepted than in other Western countries. The technology that London plans to deploy goes beyond many of the facial recognition systems used elsewhere, which match a photo against a database to identify a person. The new systems, created by the company NEC, attempt to identify people on a police watch list in real time with security cameras, giving officers a chance to stop them in the specific location.
