Campaigners criticise Starmer post-riot public surveillance plans

Programme concerns

Despite acknowledging the clearly far-right nature of the current disorder during a press conference announcing the programme, Starmer also said that the new initiative would be used to identify agitators from all parts of the ideological spectrum.

According to the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) – which monitors and resists policing that is excessive, discriminatory or threatens civil liberties – the programme will clearly be used to target organised anti-fascists that went out to oppose the far-right across the country on Wednesday 7 August.

“If you’ve been following the #spycops inquiry, you’ll know political policing units have a long history of obsessively targeting intelligence gathering against organised anti-fascists,” it posted on X (formerly Twitter). “That is certainly what the latest unit, which Starmer plans to expand, will have been told to do.”

In a follow up blog post published 13 August 2024, Netpol added that any prospect of Labour rowing back anti-protest police powers created by the Public Order Act 2023 (which placed significant new restrictions on those seeking to protest and lowers the bar for what is considered “serious” disruption) is now dead in the water.

“What we can expect instead is more funding for – and more central coordination of – protest intelligence gathering, including live-facial recognition,” it said.

“The prime minister actively supports the police’s dismissal of objections to the intrusion, unreliability and discriminatory nature of facial recognition, and the infringement on civil liberties that the extensive filming of demonstrations entails. We may also see more public order legislation and a greater willingness to quickly deploy riot units onto the streets.

“After the immediate crisis recedes, expanded police surveillance is just as likely to focus on movements for social, racial and climate justice as it does on the far right.”

Silkie Carlo, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, described the prime minister’s plan to roll out more facial recognition in response to recent disorder as “alarming”, saying it threatens rather than protects democracy.

“This AI surveillance turns members of the public into walking ID cards, is dangerously inaccurate and has no explicit legal basis in the UK,” she said. “To promise the country ineffective AI surveillance in these circumstances was frankly tone deaf and will give the public absolutely no confidence that this government has the competence or conviction to get tough on the causes of these crimes and protect the public.”

Both Netpol and Big Brother Watch – along with 28 other civil society groups –  have now signed a letter to Starmer voicing their “serious concerns” over facial-recognition surveillance.

“In times of crisis, upholding the rule of law is paramount – however, live facial recognition operates in a legal and democratic vacuum, and it is our view that its use for public surveillance is not compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights,” they wrote.

“We join you in condemning the racist, violent and disorderly scenes across the country. However, to rush in the use of technology which has a seriously negative bearing on our rights and freedoms would not only fail to address the causes of this dangerous violence, but set a chilling precedent.”

Computer Weekly contacted the Home Office about all of the concerns raised, and whether it still holds the view that facial-recognition technology is adequately covered by existing legislation under its new Labour administration, but received no direct response.

“We constantly review the use of facial recognition technology by police to keep our streets safe and ensure we restore public confidence in our police,” said a Home Office spokesperson.

Ongoing police tech concerns

In November 2023, the outgoing biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner for England and Wales, Fraser Sampson, questioned the crime prevention capabilities of facial recognition, arguing that the authorities were largely relying on its chilling effect, rather than its actual effectiveness in identifying wanted individuals.

He also warned of generally poor oversight over the use of biometric technologies by police, adding that there are real dangers of the UK slipping into an “all-encompassing” surveillance state if concerns about these powerful technologies aren’t heeded.

Sampson also previously warned in February 2023 about UK policing’s general “culture of retention” around biometric data, telling Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) that the default among police forces was to hang onto biometric information, regardless of whether it was legally allowed.

He specifically highlighted the ongoing and unlawful retention of millions of custody images of people never charged with a crime, noting that although the High Court ruled in 2012 that these images must be deleted, the Home Office – which owns most of the biometric databases used by UK police – said it can’t be done because the database they are held on has no bulk deletion capability.

A prior House of Lords inquiry into UK policing’s use of advanced algorithmic technologies – which explored the use of facial recognition and various crime prediction tools – also found in March 2022 that these tools pose “a real and current risk to human rights and to the rule of law. Unless this is acknowledged and addressed, the potential benefits of using advanced technologies may be outweighed by the harm that will occur and the distrust it will create.”

In the case of “predictive policing” technologies, Lords noted their tendency to produce a “vicious circle” and “entrench pre-existing patterns of discrimination” because they direct police patrols to low-income, already over-policed areas based on historic arrest data.

On facial recognition, they added it could have a chilling effect on protest, undermine privacy and lead to discriminatory outcomes.

After a short follow-up investigation looking specifically at facial recognition, Lords noted UK police were expanding their use of facial-recognition technology without proper scrutiny or accountability, despite lacking a clear legal basis for their deployments. They also found there were no rigorous standards or systems of regulation in place to control forces’ use of the technology.