In the first Parliamentary debate on police use of live facial recognition technology, significant concerns were raised in relation to the latitude afforded to chief officers in deploying the biometric artificial intelligence (AI) tool. Handley Gill’s specialist consultants, whose advice on the deployment of LFR was acknowledged during the debate, consider the implications of the new Labour government’s proposals to revisit the legislative and regulatory framework governing the deployment of live facial recognition by law enforcement.
As police forces are encouraged by the government to expand their use of live facial recognition technologies, with the Prime Minister announcing additional funding, Handley Gill Limited’s specialist consultants consider the legal issues that arise and the actions that Chief Constables and forces must take prior to deploying or even procuring LFR for law enforcement purposes.
Handley Gill’s specialist responsible AI consultants highlight the provisions of the EU AI Act coming into force on 02 February 2025 which ban certain AI practices within the EU, including manipulative or deceptive techniques, exploiting vulnerabilities, social scoring, predictive policing, facial recognition databases based on scraping, emotion recognition at school or work, biometric categorisation and real time biometric identification in public spaces for law enforcement, as well as new positive obligations on AI developers and deployers relating to AI literacy.