Metropolitan Police Faces Legal Scrutiny Over Unrestricted Use of Live Facial Recognition Technology
The High Court is currently examining the Metropolitan Police’s deployment of live facial recognition (LFR) technology amid concerns that the force’s policy lacks clear boundaries on where the system can be used. This judicial review questions whether the police are operating within lawful limits when utilizing this surveillance tool.
The case was initiated by Shaun Thompson, an anti-knife crime advocate who was mistakenly identified by the Met’s LFR system and subjected to an extended stop-and-search, alongside Silkie Carlo, director of the privacy watchdog Big Brother Watch. Their legal challenge centers on the absence of effective safeguards to regulate the Met’s use of LFR and prevent arbitrary or excessive deployment.
Broad Policy Allows Extensive Deployment Across London
During the two-day hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice, the claimants’ legal team argued that the Met’s LFR policy is excessively vague, enabling officers to deploy the technology almost anywhere in London. The policy’s main limitation is that LFR can only be used in “permitted locations,” a term that encompasses large areas designated as “crime hotspots.”
The policy outlines three primary scenarios for LFR use: targeting crime hotspots and their access routes; securing public events or critical infrastructure under protective operations; and deploying based on intelligence about the probable whereabouts of wanted individuals. However, the claimants highlighted that the majority of LFR deployments fall under the crime hotspot category, which is broadly defined and frequently applied.
Disconnect Between Watchlists and Deployment Locations
Lawyers for Thompson and Carlo emphasized that the Met’s watchlists, which contain between 16,000 and 17,000 facial images, are not meaningfully linked to the locations where LFR is used. This disconnect raises concerns that individuals may be placed on watchlists without a clear rationale, simply because they might pass an LFR camera in a hotspot area.
Moreover, the claimants criticized the policy’s definition of “serious crime” as any offense punishable by a prison sentence of one year or more-a threshold that diverges from other official definitions used by police or government bodies. They also pointed out that the automated and large-scale nature of LFR heightens privacy intrusions, and that the Met’s justification for using LFR-primarily “locating sought persons”-amounts to a tautology rather than a genuine operational constraint.
Permitted Locations: A Loophole for Unrestricted Surveillance
The claimants’ counsel argued that the “permitted location” criterion effectively grants the Met carte blanche to deploy LFR across vast parts of London. The designation of extensive areas as crime hotspots, combined with repeated deployments in different hotspots on the same day using identical watchlists, undermines any meaningful connection between the individuals targeted and the places where surveillance occurs.
This broad latitude, they contend, risks normalizing mass surveillance without adequate justification or oversight, potentially infringing on civil liberties and privacy rights.
Metropolitan Police Defend LFR Policy as Lawful and Proportionate
In response, the Metropolitan Police’s legal representatives characterized the challenge as a disguised proportionality argument rather than a question of legality. They maintained that the LFR policy contains clear, specific criteria that prevent arbitrary use, including mandatory written justifications for each deployment, which must be approved by senior officers.
The policy also prohibits officers from unilaterally defining what constitutes a hotspot and requires a deployment-specific assessment against rights protected under the European Convention on Human Rights. These measures, the police argue, create a robust administrative framework that limits discretion and ensures responsible use of LFR.
Met lawyers warned that ruling against the force could severely restrict the operational effectiveness of LFR, particularly since the technology’s primary benefit lies in locating individuals whose whereabouts are unknown. Limiting deployments to only those locations supported by specific intelligence about a wanted person’s presence would, they claim, significantly diminish the tool’s policing value.
Judicial Deliberation and Future of Police Facial Recognition
Judges Lord Justice Holgate and Mrs Justice Farbey are now reviewing the arguments and will issue a ruling in due course. The case unfolds against a backdrop of expanding facial recognition use by police forces across England and Wales, with Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood recently announcing plans to broaden the technology’s deployment despite ongoing consultations on a new regulatory framework.
Since the Metropolitan Police first trialed LFR at the Notting Hill Carnival in 2016, its use has surged dramatically. Yet public discourse and formal consultation have been limited, with the Home Office historically asserting that existing laws provide sufficient oversight.
In December 2025, the Home Office initiated a 10-week public consultation to gather input on regulating police use of LFR, acknowledging that the current legal landscape is fragmented and complex. The department admitted that this patchwork of legislation and guidance fails to inspire confidence among both police officers and the public regarding responsible and transparent use of facial recognition technology.
Understanding the full scope of police LFR operations currently requires navigating multiple statutes, national guidelines, and force-specific data protection policies-an opaque system that the government aims to simplify through forthcoming reforms.
