Facial recognition: 4/5 of people misidentified are Black

Starmer’s burgeoning police state, which has meant targeting thousands of peaceful anti-genocide journalists and protesters for raids, harassment, seizure of devices and often prosecution, has also meant a massive increase in the use of AI-driven facial recognition cameras across the UK and mass, unlawful accessing of passport data to assist it. More than three million people have been scanned by police facial recognition cameras over the past twelve months in London alone — and cameras are already a permanent feature of large areas of the capital.

And – to no one’s surprise but what should be the horror of all – the AI systems come preloaded with racism.

Facial recognition and human rights

The UN’s office for human rights, as well as anthropologists and tech experts, have long known that AI systems are inherently racist, either by design or through the biases of their creators — but the police facial recognition systems are going above and beyond in the service of racist discrimination.

Investigative work by civil rights group Big Brother Watch has found that of the people misidentified by these police AI systems, 80% are Black – like anti-knife crime worker Shaun Thompson, who was detained by police and forced to give fingerprints, and Robert Williams, held for thirty hours by police who wrongly thought he was a watch thief.

The Met’s own data show that of more than a thousand people flagged by facial recognition since the beginning of 2025, more than half had no arrest warrants against them – yet the force also insists that nobody has been wrongly arrested since the beginning of 2023, twisting words to claim that because police officers thought the arrests were justified at the time, the arrests were not wrong, as its response to a Freedom of Information Act request shows:

The facial recognition push goes hand in hand with Starmer’s plan to force ‘digital ID’ on anyone who wants to work — and on children in school.

Big Brother Watch Legal and Policy Officer Jasleen Chaggar said:

Live facial recognition is a mass surveillance tool that risks making London feel like an open prison, and the prospect of the Met expanding facial recognition even more across the city is disproportionate and chilling.

Far from police using these cameras to find serious wanted criminals, the Met’s report shows that the majority of people flagged by facial recognition were not wanted for arrest.

It’s disturbing that 80% of the innocent people wrongly flagged by facial recognition were black. We all want police to have the tools they need to cut crime but this is an Orwellian and authoritarian technology that treats millions of innocent people like suspects and risks serious injustice.

No law in this country has ever been passed to govern live facial recognition. Given the breathtaking risk to the public’s privacy, it’s long overdue that the government bans its use.

Featured image via Wikimedia Commons