Facial recognition refusal arrests

Police stop people for covering their faces from facial recognition camera then fine man £90 after he protested.

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A man has been arrested after refusing to be scanned by controversial facial recognition cameras being trialled by the Metropolitan Police.
The force had put out a statement saying “anyone who declines to be scanned will not necessarily be viewed as suspicious”. However, witnesses said the man was stopped after pulling his jumper over his face.
Campaign group Big Brother Watch said the man had seen placards warning members of the public that automatic facial recognition cameras were filming them from a parked police van.
“He simply pulled up the top of his jumper over the bottom of his face, put his head down and walked past,” said director Silkie Carlo.

“There was nothing suspicious about him, he was a white working-class east Londoner … you have the right to avoid [the cameras], you have the right to cover your face. I think he was exercising his rights.”
Ms Carlo, who was monitoring Thursday’s trial in Romford, London, told The Independent she saw a plain clothed police officer follow the man before a group of officers “pulled him over to one side”.
She said they demanded to see the man’s identification, which he gave them, and became “accusatory and aggressive”.
“The guy told them to p*** off and then they gave him the £90 public order fine for swearing,” Ms Carlo added. “He was really angry.”

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police could not immediately comment on the incident, but said officers were instructed to “use their judgment” on whether to stop people who avoid cameras.
Monitors saw several other people stopped outside Romford station, in north east London, including a student who had pulled his hood up and a man handcuffed and put in a police van.
Activists from the Liberty human rights group said they spoke to a youth worker who was stopped because he “looked like someone” on a watchlist, but had been misidentified.
Scotland Yard said the two-day deployment of cameras in Romford would be the last of 10 trials of the controversial technology.

The Independent revealed that more than £200,000 was spent on six deployments that resulted in no arrests between August 2016 and July last year. Two people wanted for violent offences were arrested after a trial in December.
Critics have called the force’s use of facial recognition a “shambles” and accused Scotland Yard of wasting public money.
Automatic facial recognition software compares live footage of people’s faces to photos from a watchlist of selected images from a police database.

Any potential matches are flashed up as an alert to officers, who then compare the faces and decide whether to stop someone.
The Metropolitan Police has described the deployments as “overt” and said members of the public were informed facial recognition was being used by posters and leaflets.
But no one questioned by The Independent after they passed through a scanning zone in central London in December had seen police publicity material, and campaigners claim the technology is being rolled out “by stealth”.
Detective Chief Superintendent Ivan Balhatchet, Scotland Yard’s lead for facial recognition, said a full independent evaluation will be carried out.
“Tackling violent crime is a key priority for the Met and we are determined to use all emerging technology available to support standard policing activity and help protect our communities,” he added.
“The technology being tested in this trial is developing all the time and has the potential to be invaluable to day-to-day policing.
“We continue to engage with many different stakeholders, some who actively challenge our use of this technology.”