John Hann:
You may have NEVER had any interaction with police and NEVER been arrested but it’s now likely that you WILL still be on the police facial recognition database in the U.K.? Why? Because the passport office gave them all of your data without even asking you, leaving you open to a loss of privacy and potential legal issues.
Full story:
https://x.com/JohnHann0404/status/1995502429224227226?t=geDU8wGTTyMKk44zKLeCKA&s=09
Soon we’ll all be on it anyway - UK gov has just announced
“The UK is constructing infrastructure for a surveillance society while telling itself it is merely catching criminals,”
– Eleanor “Nell” Watson
ED
27/1/26 UK Government to Create ‘British FBI’, Roll Out Nationwide Facial Recognition Cameras
The opposition Conservatives’ shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, criticized the plan, saying it would create forces that would be too big. Chris Summers
The British Home Secretary unveiled plans in Parliament on Jan. 26 for a new National Police Service (NPS), which is modeled on the FBI and will take over the fight against terrorism and organized crime in the United Kingdom.
At the weekend, Shabana Mahmood described the NPS as a “British FBI” and said it would alleviate the burden on local police forces, allowing them to concentrate on issues such as shoplifting and street robbery.
The NPS will replace the National Crime Agency, which covers England and Wales, but it will also have a UK-wide role.
On Monday, the Home Office published a 106-page White Paper that sets out in detail the new police structure and how it would be supported by state-of-the-art technology.
The document says the government would invest 115 million pounds ($157 million) over the next three years “to enable the rapid and responsible adoption of AI and automation technologies by the police.”
A new National Centre for AI in Policing, known as Police.AI, would be created.
There are also plans to roll out facial recognition cameras nationwide to help police catch wanted criminals on watchlists.
The number of facial recognition camera vehicles would be increased from 10 to 50.
“A hundred years ago, fingerprinting was decried as curtailing our civil liberties, but today we could not imagine policing without it,” Mahmood said.
“I have no doubt that the same will prove true of facial recognition technology in the years to come.”
Image: An undated image of a police officer viewing a camera feed from inside a live facial recognition vehicle at an undisclosed location in England. Andrew Matthews/PA
There is currently no dedicated statute governing police use of facial recognition in England and Wales.
Earlier this month, Eleanor “Nell” Watson, a leading researcher and adviser on artificial intelligence ethics and transparency, criticized the increased deployment of surveillance technology.
“The UK is constructing infrastructure for a surveillance society while telling itself it is merely catching criminals,” she told The Epoch Times via email.
Mahmood also announced plans to scrap the existing 43 police constabularies in England and Wales, which would be reorganized into a dozen regional forces.
“Policing is not broken, as some might have us believe,” she told the House of Commons on Monday, “Last year, the police made over three-quarters of a million arrests, five percent more than the year before.”
She said knife crime was down and murder rates in London were at their lowest recorded level.
‘Epidemic of Everyday Crime’
“However, across the country, things feel very different. Communities are facing an epidemic of everyday crime that all too often seems to go unpunished, and criminals know it,” Mahmood said. “Theft has risen by 72 percent since 2010, phone theft is up 58 percent.”
The current 43 police forces in England and Wales were set up in 1974, but Mahmood said the world has changed dramatically.
“Criminals are operating online and across borders with greater sophistication than ever before, be they drug smugglers, people traffickers or child sexual abusers,” Mahmood said.
“The world has changed dramatically since policing was last fundamentally reformed over 50 years ago. Policing remains the last great unreformed public service.”
There were plans to merge police forces 20 years ago, but the idea was dropped by the Labour government of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Labour won a general election in Britain last year, and Mahmood was installed as home secretary, tasked with sorting out Britain’s police and prisons.
“Consolidating the current model will make the police more cost-efficient, giving the taxpayer more value for money, while also ensuring a less fragmented system that will better serve the public and make them safer,” the Home Office said in the paper.
Criticism of ‘Mega-Forces’
The opposition Conservatives’ shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, criticized the plan to reduce the number of police forces from 43 to 12 and said it would create forces that would be too big.
“Such huge forces will be remote from the communities they serve. Resources will be drawn away from villages and towns towards large cities,” Philp said.
He added that the Metropolitan Police, Britain’s largest police force, had the worst crime-solving rates.
“That goes to show that large scale does not automatically deliver better results, and therefore we will oppose the mandated merger of county forces into remote regional mega-forces,” Philp said.
“Over the weekend, the Home Secretary was trailing this proposal as a British FBI,” Scottish National Party (SNP) MP Pete Wishart said.
“While it might indeed be their FBI, British, it most definitely is not, as it applies only to England and Wales.”
“In Scotland, we are immensely proud of our culture and ethos of policing by consent and the fact that we have the lowest crime rates in the whole of the UK. The last thing we want is this creeping Americanization,” Wishart added and demanded to know what powers the NPS would have in Scotland.
Mahmood said NPS would cover the whole of the UK.
“In England and Wales, it will have full operational powers and will be able to carry out its law enforcement activities,” she said.
“But in Scotland and Northern Ireland, it will carry out operations only with the agreement of the legally designated authority.”
Hi folks, I noticed this on the Big Brother Watch website:
" High Court to Hear Landmark Legal Challenge Against Police Live Facial Recognition
Big Brother Watch Team / January 27, 2026
HIGH COURT TO HEAR LANDMARK LEGAL CHALLENGE AGAINST POLICE LIVE FACIAL RECOGNITION
The High Court is to hear arguments in a landmark legal challenge to the Metropolitan Police’s use of live facial recognition cameras.
The hearing comes just weeks after the Home Office pledged to ramp up the AI-driven biometric surveillance across England and Wales.
The challenge is brought by Shaun Thompson, an anti-knife crime campaigner, and Silkie Carlo, the director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch.
“A permanent police line up”
Big Brother Watch, the campaign group supporting Mr Thompson, is leading a national campaign for strict limits on police use of facial recognition.
The Metropolitan Police first used live facial recognition at the 2016 and 2017 Notting Hill Carnivals, achieving a 98% misidentification rate. Following further trials, the force used live facial recognition 9 times between 2020 and 2022. However, in recent years, the force’s use of live facial recognition has significantly increased: it was used 180 times in 2024 and 231 times in 2025.
In 2025 alone, the Metropolitan Police scanned 4.2 million people’s biometric face data using live facial recognition cameras in public areas across the city. The force also installed the first set of permanent facial recognition cameras, scanning a shopping area in Croydon. Hammersmith and Fulham Council committed to upgrading parts of its CCTV network to include permanent live facial recognition cameras.
Director Silkie Carlo argued that the Metropolitan Police’s use of live facial recognition risks making the capital “feel like a panopticon” and “treats the general public like suspects in a permanent police line up”. Big Brother Watch has called on the government to “urgently rein in police forces’ use of these intrusive cameras.”
Legal arguments
The claimants argue that the Metropolitan Police’s use of live facial recognition breaches the right to privacy, protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, because the force’s policy on where facial recognition can be deployed is so permissive its use of the technology is not in accordance with law.
Police can choose to deploy live facial recognition cameras at “crime hotspots” and “access routes” to those hotspots, as well as critical national infrastructure, public events, and locations based on officers’ intelligence about crime. The claimants have submitted expert evidence which found that majority of the public spaces in London fall within the broad ‘crime hotspot’ definition”, and argue that in practice, there is no meaningful constraint on the expanse of live facial recognition deployments across the capital.
Ms Carlo said, “The possibility of being subjected to a digital identity check by police without our consent almost anywhere, at any time, is a serious infringement on our civil liberties that is transforming London.
When used as a mass surveillance tool, live facial recognition reverses the presumption of innocence and destroys any notion of privacy in our capital.”
Ms Carlo further argues in the legal challenge that the Metropolitan Police’s use of live facial recognition breaches individuals’ rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, protected by Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, because the excessively broad discretion afforded to officers has a chilling effect on individuals’ ability to protest.
She continued, “This legal challenge is a landmark step towards protecting the public against intrusive monitoring.”
“Stop and search on steroids”
It is the first legal challenge in Europe brought by an individual misidentified by facial recognition technology.
Mr Thompson, a 39-year-old man from London, was travelling through London Bridge, when he was wrongly flagged as a criminal by the Metropolitan Police’s facial recognition cameras. He was held by officers on Borough High Street whilst they asked for identity documents, repeatedly demanded fingerprint scans, and inspected him for scars and tattoos, seeking to confirm that he was the individual flagged by the facial recognition system. The police stop continued for over 20 minutes and Mr Thompson was threatened with arrest, despite providing multiple identification documents showing that he had been falsely identified by the facial recognition technology.
During Mr Thompson’s police stop, another passer-by was misidentified by the live facial recognition cameras and was also stopped and questioned by the police.
Mr Thompson described the police’s use of live facial recognition technology as “stop and search on steroids”.
No facial recognition law
Under the AI Act in Europe, authorities’ use of live facial recognition is generally prohibited and limited only to exceptional circumstances, such as preventing an imminent terror attack, where safeguards apply such as a clear legal basis in national law and judicial authorisation.
However, police forces have controversially used live facial recognition cameras across England and Wales since 2016 absent any primary legislation.
Police facial recognition “watchlists” include not only suspects of crime, but victims as well as “vulnerable persons”.
Police have previously populated watchlists with protesters not wanted for any offences and people with mental health issues not suspected of any crimes.
Last month, the government pledged to significantly “ramp up” police forces’ use of live facial recognition surveillance.
In 2023, 65 parliamentarians across parties, including Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey MP, Conservative former minister Sir David Davis MP, Labour’s former Shadow Attorney General Baroness Chakrabarti and over 30 rights and equality groups called on the government to call for an immediate stop to live facial recognition in public spaces in the UK.
Legal team
The claimants are represented by Dan Squires KC, Aidan Wills and Rosalind Comyn of Matrix Chambers. Also acting for the claimants are Jules Carey, Joseph Morgan and Emilia Pearson from Bindmans LLP.
Squires and Wills acted as counsel for Dr Ed Bridges against South Wales Police in the first test case concerning police use of live facial recognition technology. The Court of Appeal found that South Wales Police’s use of the surveillance breached privacy rights as there was insufficient constraints on where it could be used and who could be put on watchlists.
QUOTES
Speaking ahead of today’s hearing, claimant and Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo said:
“This legal challenge is a landmark step towards protecting the public against intrusive monitoring.
“The Met’s expansive use of live facial recognition surveillance risks making London feel like a panopticon and treats the general public like suspects in a permanent police line up.
“The possibility of being subjected to a digital identity check by police without our consent almost anywhere, at any time, is a serious infringement on our civil liberties that is transforming London. When used as a mass surveillance tool, live facial recognition reverses the presumption of innocence and destroys any notion of privacy in our capital.
“We are totally out of step with the rest of Europe on live facial recognition. This is an opportunity for the court to uphold our democratic rights and instigate much-needed safeguards against intrusive AI-driven surveillance.”
Claimant, anti-knife crime campaigner with Street Fathers, and victim of live facial recognition misidentification Shaun Thompson said:
“I was misidentified by a live facial recognition system while coming home from a community patrol in Croydon. Police officers told me I was a wanted man and demanded my fingerprints even though I’d done nothing wrong.
“What happened to me was shocking and unfair.
“I’m challenging this because people should be treated with respect and fairness, and what happened to me shouldn’t happen to anyone else. But if police keep using live facial recognition for mass surveillance, thousands more people will be treated with suspicion. It’s stop and search on steroids.”
ENDS
NOTES
Photos of Silkie Carlo, Shaun Thompson, and live facial recognition deployments are available here
Big Brother Watch is crowdfunding to cover the claimants’ legal costs
Please send any further enquiries to info@bigbrotherwatch.org.uk or 07730439257
More detail on Big Brother Watch’s campaign to #StopFacialRecognition is available on our website "
I suspect this is the only site which will report the result of this action - under the Rule of Claw sadly I don’t hold out much hope for them.
cheers
I noticed the fascists in charge are dispensing with Police and Crime Commissioners and cutting police forces from 43 to maybe 10 - they say this will save the taxpayer £100 million - they also say they will use £20 million to pay for 320 constables and yet new constables only get £32,000 p.a. and more experienced max out at around £50,000 which means the bureacracy to control those 320 police will cost around £10 million and the constables ( at the lower rate ) only get around £10 million. I wonder how much is being syphoned off into AI costs? On the above numbers it could be 90% of the £100 million - most of which would be sent overseas - no doubt to a corporate tax haven slush fund!
Follow the money folks!
To cut crime it would be easier to cut offences which result in the arrest of old aged pensioners and disabled protesters rather than increase the employment of police thugs which would look like the UK equivalent of the US ICE murderers - just in time for Farage to expand the blood in the streets!
cheers
Having renewed passport and driving license using a certain recent likeness in the last eighteen months I know that I am “known”.
The land registry has me. And so do loads of others.
Happily I live in an area with very little public CCTV and lots of little back lanes. No longer drive the car.
Once I hit the bus or a train (or the robot checkout at Aldi) the panopticon clocks “me” again. Long periods of fog otherwise. The nearest post office shares CCTV with feds. I usually just walk the other way.
Phone is compromised, I know, and don’t care… sorry, but no real point lamenting the coup d’aitat
simply disappear into a gnostic fog
Not feasible in SE England, Paris, Munich, I recognise so choose your crib carefully. I think most 5F readers probably already did.