Police used live facial recognition at The Lexicon
Police deployed live facial recognition technology at The Lexicon, a shopping centre in Bracknell. The surveillance operation scanned people in a public retail space in real time.
Why this matters: Live facial recognition in a shopping centre means your face is being checked against a watchlist just because you went out to shop. You do not know it is happening. You did not consent. Most people scanned will not be on any list, but they get scanned anyway. That is a lot of surveillance directed at ordinary people going about ordinary business. The accountability question is simple: who approved this, what list was used, and what happens to the data of everyone who matched nothing.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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