Liverpool City centre is about to go full Big Brother

Liverpool city centre is about to become the latest testing ground for mass surveillance.

On Monday 15 December, Merseyside Police will roll out facial recognition technology. This move will transform the city into a digital checkpoint. This racially biased technology poses a dangerous risk. It affects anyone who isn’t white or isn’t willing to tow the line. Meanwhile, Starmer intensifies his war on free speech and protests

Racism in Merseyside Police is a problem that runs deep

Merseyside police deploying Live Facial Recognition (LFR) isn’t just an Orwellian crack down on civil liberties, it reinforces existing racial bias. The technology is deeply flawed. The Home Office notes that it disproportionately targets marginalised communities.

Still, the police are assuring the people of Liverpool that when the software flags a person, their face will be compared to the database by an officer. Reassuring…hardly.

According to official statistics, Merseyside police already has the highest stop and search rate in England and Wales. Unsurprisingly, it shows the targeting of Black people, stopped at a rate three times higher than whites. The stats are clear — 61.9 searches per 1,000 Black residents, compared to just 19.2 for whites.

It gets worse.

The false positive rate is just 0.04% for white people, but jumps to 4% for Asians and 5.5% for Black people. For Black women, it’s even worse — a shocking 9.9%. That’s a 1 in 10 chance.

Placing a biased machine in a city synonymous with racialised policing will be a fucking nightmare, and we should be very fucking scared about it.

Furthermore, children as young as 12 are amongst hundreds of under-18’s included on the facial recognition watchlists. This leaves the door open for vulnerable minors in Liverpool to be targeted.

The crackdown on freedom to protest

If racial bias wasn’t terrifying enough, the LFR rollout poses a huge threat to democratic dissent in Liverpool. The watchlists used in previous LFR cases have included peaceful protesters not persons wanted for specific crimes.

The danger is even greater in Liverpool, where Merseyside police arrested 66 people under section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000. These mass arrests have specifically targeted supporters of Palestine Action and crushed peaceful protest. Even more concerning is the site of these arrests — near the Wheel of Liverpool— the heart of the city where the facial recognition system is to be deployed.

The LFR system hands cops a tool to identify, track, and pre-emptively intervene against protesters. The risk is that anyone could be targeted — a person grabbing a coffee near a protest, walking through, or minding their own business.

And more scarily, these current systems currently operate in a legal vacuum. They have previously been deemed unlawful in the landmark ‘Bridges Case’ for violating privacy rights and data protection laws. The case found that LFR policies gave too much discretion to individual coppers.

One thing is clear: the latest deployment is an act of mass surveillance.

It’s time to say no

The rollout of Live Facial Recognition in Liverpool centre is a massive red flag — one we must actively fight. It combines existing police racism with biased technology, creating a recipe for mass discrimination.

Right now we need to be boycotting these surveillance zones or mask up, and stay updated with publications like Big Brother Watch to challenge every move these vans make.

They are selling this technology under the guise of keeping Liverpool safe. However, the outcome will be the criminalisation of communities of colour and activists. Unless Merseyside halts this rollout and commits to a transparent legal framework, Liverpool will serve as a warning to the rest of the UK.

The demands of a biased, illegal surveillance system, will continue eroding our basic rights and empowering the police.

Featured image via Unsplash/Sean Robbins