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London council used facial recognition technology on streets without consulting residents
A London council has used facial recognition technology on its streets without consulting local residents, The Telegraph can reveal.
Waltham Forest Council has admitted it carried out a three day pilot earlier this year to test facial recognition technology using four cameras in public spaces including a train station and the main shopping street in the London borough.
A council spokesman said the trial was carried out to see if the technology could “assist as a more efficient search method for known suspects, to monitor criminal activity, and to assist looking for vulnerable/missing people if required”.
The council does not plan to follow up the trial in the "short term" but no decision has been made about the longer term future, the spokesman added.
Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, said the council’s use of the “intrusive and controversial” technology in was “Orwellian and unjustifiable”.
Facial recognition technology works by scanning every face that passes a camera and then trying to match the faces to a “watch list”. Several police forces have trialled the technology using watch lists made up of offenders wanted by the police.
The technology was provided free of charge by AnyVision, an Israeli company that recently received investment from Microsoft and has been criticised by human rights campaigners for allegedly carrying out surveillance of Palestinians.
Privacy campaigners said it is the first example they have come across of a council using this technology.
Facial recognition technology is contentious because campaigners claim it violates the right to privacy and could lead to mass surveillance. There are also concerns that the technology is less accurate at detecting people of colour.
A Waltham Forest Council spokesman said that in this case the watch list was made up of council and AnyVision employees who gave their consent for the trial and the technology was not used “to search for or identify members of the public”.
Earlier this year the Kings Cross Estate in London faced heavy criticism after it emerged facial recognition technology is in use on the privately-owned site, which can track thousands of people.
The UK’s privacy watchdog has launched an investigation into the King’s Cross estate’s use of the technology.
Waltham Forest Council used facial recognition technology through existing cameras in place at four locations – Wood Street Station, Walthamstow High Street, Rosebank Villas in Walthamstow Central and Dyers Hall Bridge in Leytonstone.
A council spokesperson said: “Waltham Forest Council is not using facial recognition technology anywhere in the borough. Our three-day trial of facial recognition camera software was only used for test searches on a sample of council staff and employees of AnyVision - all of whom had provided their consent – and was fully compliant with our role as data controllers. The technology was not used to search for or identify members of the public.
“The software was trialled on existing cameras in areas where signage is in place informing people that CCTV is in operation. For the purposes of the trial we sought and received guidance from the Security Systems and Alarms Inspection Board that we did not need to alter the signage in the covered areas.
"The software was uninstalled completely at the end of the trial, and all data deleted by the council and AnyVision in compliance with the Information Commissioner’s Office CCTV guidance.
“Before the trial started, we undertook a mandatory Data Protection Impact Assessment to meet our obligations under the EU General Data Protection Legislation (GDPR). We are compliant with the Information Commissioner’s Office’s CCTV Code, and we work to Home Office approved standards.”
Hannah Couchman, Policy and Campaigns Officer at Liberty, said: “With politicians and the public increasingly concerned about the threat facial recognition poses, it is outrageous that Waltham Forest Council secretly subjected residents to this intrusive monitoring.
“Everyone who passed the cameras will have had their sensitive data snatched without their knowledge or consent - regardless of who was on the watch list. Facial recognition is a mass surveillance tool which undermines our rights and is used to target communities which already experience unjustified and disproportionate surveillance.
“It is alarming to see the Council point to signage and codes of conduct which relate solely to CCTV – a fundamentally different technology. This suggests that the Council are ignoring – or are oblivious to – the serious rights concerns presented by facial recognition.
“This is just the latest example of the creeping presence of this technology on our streets, and another reason why it’s time for a ban on facial recognition in all public spaces.”