The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, has predicted that facial recognition technology could revolutionise criminal investigations in the same way that DNA testing has done. While this prospect has been described as dystopian by human rights campaigners, Rowley maintains that facial recognition has already proven to be effective in identifying offenders from crowds of people. He suggests that retroactively using the technology to identify unknown suspects from CCTV images has immense potential and could transform investigative work in a similar way to how DNA testing did 30 years ago. The results so far have exceeded his expectations.
In a statement responding to Sir Rowley’s comments, Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, said: “Just as the emergence of DNA led to robust laws that balance and limit powers on its use in law enforcement and trials, we need a democratic, lawful approach to the role of facial biometrics in Britain, but so far there hasn’t even been a parliamentary debate on it.”
What is this page?
You are reading a summary article on the Privacy Newsfeed, a free resource for DPOs and other professionals with privacy or data protection responsibilities helping them stay informed of industry news all in one place. The information here is a brief snippet relating to a single piece of original content or several articles about a common topic or thread. The main contributor is listed in the top left-hand corner, just beneath the article title.
The Privacy Newsfeed monitors over 300 global publications, of which more than 5,750 summary articles have been posted to the online archive dating back to the beginning of 2020. A weekly roundup is available by email every Friday.
