The police are increasingly using facial recognition cameras in public to spy on us

Long Read

Post date

20th February 2019

(In order to click the hyperlinks in the explainer below, please download the pdf version at the bottom of the page).

You can also watch a short animated explainer about facial recognition cameras here.

Our campaign

Neighbourhood Watched

Learn more

Biometrics

Facial Recognition

Related learning resources

Explainers

Our fight

Contesting Government Data and System Exploitation

Defending Democracy and Dissent

Location

United Kingdom

Attachments

You can download this explainer here

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In December 2019, the Information Rights Tribunal issued two disappointing decisions refusing appeals brought by Privacy International against the UK Information Commissioner relating to the transparency of the use of IMSI catchers by law enforcement. This piece sets out why PI has decided not to appeal these decisions.

Report

Police extracting data from mobile phone

Old Law, New Tech and Continue Opacity: Police Scotland's use of mobile phone extraction

“...a mobile device is now a huge repository of sensitive data, which could provide a wealth of information about its owner. This has in turn led to the evolution of mobile device forensics, a branch of digital forensics, which deals with retrieving data from a mobile device.” The situation in

News & Analysis

Real-time facial recognition should never be coupled with body-worn cameras

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Explainer

Push This Button For Evidence: Digital Forensics

We look at the recently published report on forensic science in the UK , highlight concerns about police not understanding new tech used to extract data from mobile phones; the risk of making incorrect inferences and the general lack of understanding about the capabilities of these tools. The

The police are increasingly using facial recognition cameras in public to spy on us

Related Content

Information Tribunal Decisions re IMSI Catchers: A loss for transparency and why we will continue the fight through other means

Old Law, New Tech and Continue Opacity: Police Scotland's use of mobile phone extraction

Real-time facial recognition should never be coupled with body-worn cameras

Push This Button For Evidence: Digital Forensics