The instalment of permanent facial recognition cameras in Croydon should worry us all, writes Big Brother Watch interim director Rebecca Vincent

Croydon, Big Brother is watching you

It’s been a busy month at Big Brother Watch. Amidst a number of worrying bills being rushed through parliament at breakneck speed and the Home Office’s relentless battle to break encryption, we’ve also seen alarming escalations in the roll-out of live facial recognition (LFR) technology that should have everyone worried.

Things were bad enough when South Wales Police trialled the use of a network of LFR cameras across an entire city centre in Cardiff – a UK first – for two of the Six Nations games earlier this month. In the LFR zone were places of worship, a family court, abortion and health clinics, and other sites where anyone would want their right to privacy respected. This represented a gross violation of privacy of anyone who had reason to be in Cardiff on a busy Saturday.

The grand total of arrests during the Wales vs England rugby match on 15 March, when police scanned 162,680 faces? Zero – evidencing a shameful waste of police resources, on top of serious rights-based concerns.

Now the situation has reached an even more disturbing new low, with reports emerging over the weekend that the London Metropolitan Police Service is installing the UK’s first permanent network of........

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