Shoppers could be scanned if Oxford Street gets facial recognition cameras
A proposal to install facial recognition cameras on Oxford Street, one of London's busiest shopping areas, would mean shoppers could be scanned as they move through the area. The plan has drawn attention to the use of live facial recognition in public commercial spaces.
Why this matters: If you walk down Oxford Street, you are there to shop, not to be identified. Live facial recognition in a space like that scans everyone, not just people police are looking for. Most of those people have done nothing wrong and have no idea their face is being checked against a database. The UK has very little hard law governing this. That gap matters because once the cameras go up, the practice tends to expand quietly and the public rarely gets a say.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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