Police are using facial recognition technology near Boardmasters Festival
Police have deployed facial recognition technology in the vicinity of the Boardmasters Festival, a large music and surf event in the UK. The use of the surveillance tool near a public gathering is drawing attention from privacy observers.
Why this matters: Festivals are not crime scenes. They are crowds of people doing something legal and fun. Running facial recognition across that crowd means scanning thousands of faces without consent, without suspicion, and without most people knowing it is happening. That is a lot of biometric data collected on people whose only connection to law enforcement is standing near a stage. The case for using this technology at a music festival needs to be a lot stronger than the case against it, and right now nobody is really making it.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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