Met Police to deploy live facial recognition technology for Chelsea vs Tottenham
The Metropolitan Police plan to use live facial recognition technology at the Chelsea versus Tottenham football match, scanning faces in the crowd in real time against a watchlist.
Why this matters: Live facial recognition at a football match means tens of thousands of people get scanned without choosing to opt in. You show up to watch a game and your face is run through a database. Most people in that crowd are not on any watchlist. They are just fans. The Met keeps expanding where it uses this technology, and each new venue normalizes the next one. The real issue is who ends up on the watchlist, how accurate the system is, and what happens when it gets someone wrong in a crowd that size.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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