Big Brother Watch is bringing a legal challenge against the Met Police’s use of the technology, alongside Shaun Thompson, who was wrongly identified by an LFR camera.
Rebecca Vincent, interim director of Big Brother Watch, said: “Police have interpreted the absence of any legislative basis authorising the use of this intrusive technology as carte blanche to continue to roll it out unfettered, despite the fact that a crucial judicial review on the matter is pending.
“The Home Office must scrap its plans to roll out further live facial recognition capacity until robust legislative safeguards are established.”
Charlie Whelton, policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, said: “It’s welcome news that the government will finally develop a statutory framework on the use of facial recognition, but this should be in place before more facial recognition technology is rolled out.
“There’s no reasonable excuse to be putting even more cameras on our streets before the public have had their say and legislation is brought in to protect all of us.”
The government says officers using the LFR vans will need to follow the College of Policing’s guidance on the technology and the Surveillance Camera Code of Practice.
It also says independent testing of the facial recognition algorithm by the National Physical Laboratory found that “the algorithm is accurate and there is no bias for ethnicity, age or gender at the settings used by the police”.
Chief Superintendent of South Wales Police Tim Morgan said: “We understand the concerns which are raised about the use of live facial recognition technology and we use any new technology ethically and spend time and effort making sure it’s deployed in line with all legislation and guidance.”
The Police Federation of England and Wales, which represents police officers, said: “The government must also invest in comprehensive training programmes for officers to accompany this technology rollout, particularly as police forces face an unprecedented officer retention crisis.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the government would “provide police with the tools they need to do their jobs”.
“Facial recognition will be used in a targeted way to identify sex offenders or people wanted for the most serious crimes who the police have not been able to find.”