Civil society groups warn facial recognition too biased for Notting Hill carnival

Eleven civil liberty and anti-racist groups have written to Mark Rowley, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, urging him to scrap plans to deploy live facial recognition (LFR) cameras at the Notting Hill carnival. In an open letter, the group, which includes Privacy Watch, Privacy International, Open Rights Group, Liberty, Big Brother Watch, Access Now, StopWatch and Statewatch, warned that using the technology at an event celebrating the African-Caribbean community would exacerbate concerns about racial bias and discriminatory policing, particularly given the Met's designation as an institutionally racist force by the Casey review.

The groups claim that LFR is less accurate for women and people of colour. They cite an independent report from the National Physical Laboratory, which found that when the Met's LFR technology, NeoFace, is set at low thresholds, it shows a bias against Black males and females. The campaigners say police are not legally required to run the technology on higher, less biased settings.

In response, Rowley clarified that the LFR cameras would be used "in a non-discriminatory way" with the algorithm set so that it "does not perform in a way which exhibits bias."

He accepted that previous LFR use at the carnival in 2016 and 2017 did not build public trust after it incorrectly identified 102 people as potential suspects. Since then, Rowley confirmed that "the current version of the algorithm is significantly improved, has undergone independent testing and validation, and now performs to a much higher standard."