Met Police deploy LFR in Lewisham without community input

Insufficient information

Another part of the issue, according to Shrivastava, is the lack of oversight the council has over who the police are targeting with their deployments, as the force is refusing to divulge any information to it about demographic data or false matches.  

For example, commenting on the March deployment, Shrivastava posted on X: “Like all public bodies, the police are subject to the public sector equality duty. Yet it will not share the demographic data of its watchlists or those falsely matched by LFR. This is a huge concern in a borough with a large multi-racial population and over-policed communities.”

Responding to questions from the select committee in July 2024, however, the force confirmed in writing that its LFR watchlists were “not searchable by protected characteristic” and that “in line with Mopac [Mayor’s Office for Police and Crime] and College of Policing guidance, data involving how many scans, demographics of those stopped or arrested are not recorded or published”.

During the July meeting, Shrivastava told an acting chief inspector from the local policing team in Lewisham that the force had not provided all of the requested information relating to its LFR deployments, noting the information provided was “quite brief”.

He further reminded the inspector that the committee has a remit to scrutinise crime and disorder strategies under primary legislation – the Police and Crime Act 2006.

While the inspector offered no further comment on the written answers from the Met, he noted during the committee session that LFR is only deployed in “high-crime areas” dictated by Mopac, and that as a matter of tactics, the force does not advertise its deployment beyond tweets on the morning of deployment and signage in the area.

Responding to Computer Weekly’s questions about the concerns raised by Lewisham councillors, a Met Police spokesperson said its LFR deployments “have been very much supported by the majority of Lewisham residents, business owners and political representatives, namely Lewisham councillors”.

The spokesperson added that over the past six months, the force has delivered “more than six briefings at a mixture of public forums, private council and independent advisory group sessions” to explain what its LFR deployments entail and to answer all enquiries posed by committee members.

“We have responded to feedback from community groups, which has included questioning the number of police officers stationed in the immediate vicinity of the LFR van, and though we have revised tactics where appropriate, we remain committed to our original brief of how LFR operations must run. This includes a minimum rank of inspector leading each deployment and ensuring information leaflets on the operation are distributed,” the spokesperson said.

“They also talk and record conversations with community members who wish to comment. Plus we have a Community Impact Assessment running for all LFR deployment sites in Lewisham. We have run previous deployments in Catford and on Lewisham High Street, as well as published informative messaging on our social media platforms, but as per our policy, we do not advertise the date and site of deployments before the day itself.”

Computer Weekly contacted the Lewisham Safer Neighbourhood Board – which was set up to monitor and scrutinise police activity in the area – about the Met’s approach to LFR, but received no response.

No specific legislation

Giving evidence at the July 2024 committee meeting, the policy and campaign manager at human rights group Liberty, Emmanuelle Andrews, said police are relying on a “tenuous combination of pre-existing legislation” to justify their LFR use, adding there is “overbroad discretion in how it’s used, when it’s used, where it’s used” that needs to be explicitly legislated for.  

Both Parliament and civil society have repeatedly called for new legal frameworks to govern law enforcement’s use of biometrics – including an official inquiry into police use of advanced algorithmic technologies by the Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee (JHAC); two of the UK’s former biometrics commissioners, Paul Wiles and Fraser Sampson; an independent legal review by Matthew Ryder KC; the UK’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission; and the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, which called for a moratorium on LFR as far back as July 2019.

During his time in office before resigning in October 2023, Sampson also highlighted a lack of clarity about the scale and extent of public space surveillance, as well as concerns around the general “culture of retention” in UK policing around biometric data.

This includes the ongoing unlawful retention of millions of custody images that are used to populate the police facial recognition watchlists, which the High Court ruled in 2012 should be deleted.

Despite this, the Home Office has repeatedly affirmed the right of police forces to use facial recognition technologies within existing legal frameworks, while UK police’s use of the tech has generally been ramping up over the past couple of years.

According to the Met’s deployment logs, for example, while LFR was deployed on nine occasions between 2020 and 2022, resulting in nine arrests, this increased markedly to 96 occasions between 2023 and May 2024, which resulted in a further 243 arrests.

There are now plans to further expand the use of facial recognition in the wake of racist rioting across England, with prime minister Kier Starmer committing to wider deployment and increased information sharing between forces.

However, Starmer’s plans have attracted strong criticism from civil society and campaign groups, which say they are concerned about the surveillance implications of the initiative and its damaging effect on wider civil liberties.