Police use facial recognition near Boardmasters in Newquay
Police deployed facial recognition technology in the area around the Boardmasters festival in Newquay, according to a BBC report. The deployment targeted a large public gathering, scanning people in the vicinity of the event.
Why this matters: Festivals are not crime scenes. Most people near Boardmasters were there to watch surf and music. Facial recognition in that context means thousands of people get scanned without any suspicion attached to them. That is a significant use of biometric surveillance on a largely civilian crowd in a public space. The key things to know: whose faces went into the system, what happened to the data afterward, and whether anyone had a real choice about being scanned.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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