Live facial recognition cameras to be used on UK’s busiest shopping street
Live facial recognition cameras are being deployed on one of the UK's busiest shopping streets, marking a significant expansion of real-time biometric surveillance in a high-footfall public space.
Why this matters: Every person who walks down that street gets scanned, whether they are a suspect or not. That is not targeted policing. That is a system that treats the public as a database to be checked. Facial recognition in busy shopping areas normalizes continuous biometric surveillance in everyday life. The people most likely to be misidentified are the people least likely to have power to challenge it. The UK has no dedicated law governing live facial recognition. That gap is the real problem.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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