Metropolitan Police hails facial recognition tech after record year for arrests
- Reference: 1762174603
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/11/03/metropolitan_police_hails_facial_recognition/
- Source link:
The [1]report [PDF] covered the period from September 2024 to September 2025, noting that from the 203 deployments, LFR cameras triggered 2,077 alerts with 10 false positives.
Cops said the arrests were mostly comprised of people who were wanted by the courts (549); and those the MPS said it had "reasonable grounds" to believe may be either about to commit, currently committing, or have already committed an offence (347). The remaining 85 arrests related to those managed by multiple agencies (MAPAA nominals), such as registered sex offenders (RSOs), and stalkers, as well as those in breach of their conditions.
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It said more than a quarter related to individuals involved with violence against women and girls, and that none of the total arrests were officially deemed to be unnecessary.
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Lindsey Chiswick, lead for LFR at the Met and nationally, [5]said : "We are proud of the results achieved with LFR. Our goal has always been to keep Londoners safe and improve the trust of our communities. Using this technology is helping us do exactly that.
"This is a powerful and game-changing tool, which is helping us to remove dangerous offenders from our streets and deliver justice for victims.
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"We remain committed to being transparent and engaging with communities about our use of LFR, to demonstrate we are using it fairly and without bias."
About those false positives
The MPS chose the most attractive way of interpreting the false alert rate, saying that it represents just a 0.0003 percent failure rate, considering the total 3,147,436 faces it scanned across all deployments.
But, if you look at it in terms of the number of alerts LFR cameras made (2,077), it represents a considerably less appealing rate of 0.48 percent.
The MPS assured that only six of these 10 false positive alerts led to engagements with the subjects, each lasting no more than five minutes, and said none of the people were arrested.
Ten different reasons were given for each of the false positives, which mainly related to image quality issues such as poor lighting, poor angles, and faces being covered by clothing or other passersby.
[7]
However, in one case, an LFR camera falsely alerted police to an identical twin of a genuine suspect, and another got the gender of the subject wrong, the report says.
One aspect of the report that caught the attention of privacy and human rights groups was the ethnic breakdown of these false positives, with eight out of ten concerning Black people.
The report states:
Of the 10 false alerts, 2 involved White males, 7 involved Black males, and 1 involved a Black female, all aged between 25 and 43. Each false alert is reviewed individually and taken seriously.
LFR and ethnic biases
Ethnic biases have been central to the longstanding criticisms of LFR tech globally, and the UK's previous use was no stranger to similar scrutiny.
On multiple occasions, according to separate research in [8]2020 and [9]2023 , the UK's LFR technology was shown to exhibit racial biases in false positive alerts.
Regardless, the MPS has consistently defended the technology's performance, despite being aware of the issues.
The latest annual review of LFR deployments goes on to claim the 80 percent Black rate for false positives was nothing to worry about.
"Overall, the system's performance remains in line with expectations, and any demographic imbalances observed are not statistically significant. This will remain under careful review."
Demographic biases in LFR alerts are independently tested at the National Physical Laboratory at 0.60, 0.62, and 0.64 match thresholds.
The threshold for the reporting period was set between 0.60 and 0.64, meaning that a positive alert would only be made if a subject was face-matched within that threshold, and the ten false positives were all made when that was set at 0.64.
The report goes on to say the overrepresentation of Black men in the data (seven of the eight false positives were Black males) could be explained by the location of LFR deployments.
"Whilst the difference is not statistically significant, one factor that may influence LFR outcomes more generally is the location of deployments, which are focused on crime hotspots," it said.
"These areas often overlap with communities experiencing higher levels of deprivation, where Black males are statistically overrepresented in both crime and victimization data."
Long-term opponents to LFR use in the UK, Big Brother Watch's legal and policy officer Jasleen Chaggar scathed the report's findings.
"It's disturbing that 80 percent of the innocent people wrongly flagged by facial recognition were Black," she [10]said . "We all want police to have the tools they need to cut crime but this is an Orwellian and authoritarian technology that treats millions of innocent people like suspects and risks serious injustice.
"No law in this country has ever been passed to govern live facial recognition and given the breathtaking risk to the public's privacy, it is long overdue that the government stops its use to account for its serious risks."
[11]Britain's policing minister punts facial recog nationwide
[12]UK expands police facial recognition rollout with 10 new vans heading to a town near you
[13]Show us your face: New Orleans PD reportedly got secret facial recognition alerts
[14]TSA's airport facial-recog tech faces audit probe
Broad support
The MPS said a Public Attitude Survey, commissioned by the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime, revealed that 85 percent of Londoners support the use of LFR across the city, although that comes with some caveats.
The LGBT+ community was the strongest opponent compared to the average, followed by those of mixed ethnicities, then by Black respondents.
The survey showed younger people were more likely to oppose the technology than older generations, with the strongest deviation from the average coming from those aged 25 to 34. The over-65s were the most supportive age group by a distance.
The MPS said it understands the importance of building trust in new technologies and said it was committed to working with the wider community on that front.
The perceived success of LFR has led the government to encourage its [15]wider use more broadly across the UK.
Croydon's use of the technology, which is unlike many other temporary deployments in that it has two permanently installed cameras, will [16]inform new literature set to be released this year to guide other regions' LFR strategies. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/force-content/met/advice/lfr/other-lfr-documents/live-facial-recognition-annual-report-2025.pdf
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aQjfp-8BfUWXkmjapjXAFQAAAU0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aQjfp-8BfUWXkmjapjXAFQAAAU0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aQjfp-8BfUWXkmjapjXAFQAAAU0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://news.met.police.uk/news/live-facial-recognition-helping-to-make-the-capital-safer-according-to-new-report-502769
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aQjfp-8BfUWXkmjapjXAFQAAAU0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aQjfp-8BfUWXkmjapjXAFQAAAU0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/06/uk_police_facial_recognition/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/25/facial_recognition_system_used_by/
[10] https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/press-releases/big-brother-watch-responds-to-the-metropolitan-polices-2025-live-facial-recognition-report/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/30/britains_policing_minister_talks_up/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/13/uk_expands_police_facial_recognition/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/19/new_orleans_facial_recognition/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/03/tsa_facial_recognition_audit/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/13/uk_expands_police_facial_recognition/
[16] http://guidance
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The Met can't be racist. Some of their best computers are black.
Re: 80% of the false positives were black
How large is the black population in areas where they were deployed?
Re: 80% of the false positives were black
Why are they being deployed in areas with high black population when nation-wide around 80% of arrests and convictions are for white perps, and even in London that's around 45%?
( https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/ethnicity-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2022/statistics-on-ethnicity-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2022-html )
Eh?
However, in one case, an LFR camera falsely alerted police to an identical twin of a genuine suspect, and another got the gender of the subject wrong , the report says.
Given that gender, a bit like a person's religion, is something that exists purely within someone's mind, then that's hardly surprising!
Perhaps you meant to write sex, which is a physical attribute associated with all members of the animal kingdom?
Re: Eh?
How do you feel about holding "sex reveal parties" to label the unborn with blue or pink?
Re: Eh?
"Blue or Pink"
Goodness! Talk about stereotyping... Rainbows only please...
Re: Eh?
Since my sarky reply seems to be going "whoosh", let me point out that the word "gender" has been used by the squeamish & religious as a synonym for "sex" for decades at least, probably longer.
The current obsession with making the distinction you have made is revisionist bullshit.
Re: Eh?
Well in our brave new world, gender is clearly not synonymous with sex. There are currently 72 recognised genders, so please explain how a CCTV camera can differentiate?
Re: Eh?
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master—that’s all.”
― Lewis Carroll, 'Through the Looking Glass'
The question is, does use of the word enable or disable clear communication?
Just waiting for an excuse ..
Doesn't matter how good or bad the technology is, or the morality of it, it's soon going to get rolled out far and wide. Home Sec ydy and Shadow Home Sec tdy, both singing it's praises, both seizing on the knifeman on the train as a reason to deploy and saying it's "to keep the public safe". Damn them both, and the people advising them.
All the fcking while not showing this data against the backdrop of other pre-face-rec. Or showing the actual numbers, or showing how many false positives/arrest there were as a result and how many times they were sued....
apples & oranges
there was no "pre-face-rec" situation where meatbag plods manually scanned a million faces from cctv cameras , and if there was you can bet the fail rate would be much higher
... cue the downvotes
So while exact figures are hard to come by (laughably the courts stopped keeping centralised records due to "data quality" issues...), best guesses from various places estimate about 70,000 or so "failure to appear" notices get served each year by the courts, so that's broadly about 0.1% of the UK population. (Given obviously that some people get more than one, but also that your average 5 year old probably doesn't receive too many...)
The Met's figures have said that (even with cameras primarily deployed in "crime hotspots") it has only caught 550 of those from 3 million scans - so that's less than 0.02% - so in fact these facial recognition scans would only seem to be sending an "alert" for about a fifth of the people wanted for skipping court
That's hardly a success in my book...
well , given that your figures are national , and the articles figures are London , your results are not surprising
ldn 9m
uk 69 m
so your 0.02 * ( 69 / 9) = 0.15 . so , er , point proven
Huh? Ok - so I am assuming that the FTA rate nationally and the one for just London are broadly the same, because, as I said, FTA rates are no longer published centrally - an earlier poster also called this out, the Met happily picks and chooses it's data without giving a complete picture. (Lies, damn lies & statistics etc...)
Chances are in fact, that in London, the FTA rate is higher than the national average, so probably greater than 0.1% of the population - the Facial Recognition "success" rate is for FTA's from the Met's own figures is no higher than 0.02%
I have no idea why you seem to be conflating bits from two different calculations?...
about 70,000 or so "failure to appear" notices get served each year by the courts, so that's broadly about 0.1% of the UK population
The vast majority of those notices presumably aren't active for very long, certainly not a year, so you can't conclude 0.1% of the population at any one time is wanted for FTA.
But we could certainly question whether the vast majority of those 550 would otherwise simply have been picked up at known addresses hours or a few days later if they weren't already caught by LFR. Or even earlier if the officers visited those addresses instead of manning a camera.
Are we to assume that the 714777 face scans were deleted? Or saved for later w/ GPS and timestamp data?
80% of the false positives were black
Quelle fucking surprise. Of course the most institutionally racist police force in the UK loves it and thinks it's a great success.