EFF and Civil Society Groups Call on Nottinghamshire Police to Halt Live Face Recognition
A coalition of civil liberties organizations, including EFF and Big Brother Watch, has written to Nottinghamshire Police urging the force to stop its planned rollout of live facial recognition technology in public spaces. The letter outlines six specific concerns about the surveillance system.
Why this matters: When police scan everyone's face on a public street, every person in that space becomes a data point before any crime has occurred. That is mass surveillance by design, not a targeted investigation tool. Nottinghamshire Police calling this 'just another tool' is exactly the framing worth pushing back on. The technology does not have a narrow scope. It sweeps up innocent people continuously, and the risks — misidentification, chilling effects on protest and assembly, racial bias — do not shrink just because the police find it useful.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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