London Police are setting up live facial recognition cameras and people are not happy about it

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London is already the most camera-crazy city outside of China, but now some of those cameras will be running facial recognition software as well. If you’re on one of the many “bespoke” watch lists held by the Metropolitan Police (the Met), cameras in tourist-heavy areas will be looking out for you.

They’ve been trialing the system for some time now, but the Met will be expanding the system, making facial recognition the new normal for Londoners.

London will soon have live facial recognition cameras tracking your every move

If you’re in a tourist hotspot area in London in the near future, just know that the CCTV is also using facial recognition to scan for watchlisted people. Lovely, a slice of civil liberty impingement to go along with my sight-seeing.

• The Met says the facial recognition system has resulted in “70 percent of those wanted being picked up.” Independent reviews showed a much lower number, with eight out of 42 verified as correct
• Areas such as the West End and Stratford’s Westfield shopping center are the first to get the new system
• Police officers will approach those people flagged by the system to confirm their identity before arrest
• The Met already have daily briefings to its officers for those suspects they should be looking out for

With other cities such as San Francisco banning the use of facial recognition technology by local government, it seems London has taken the other option. Whether it’ll have much impact on crime in one of the most-watched cities in the world remains to be seen.

What do you think? How do you feel about facial recognition in cities? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• A facial recognition company scraped billion of photos from sites like Facebook and YouTube
• Clearview AI, the company that already knows your face, requires a picture of your face to opt-out
• The DHS wants to expand airport facial recognition scans to US citizens – Yikes
• How to opt-out of Facebook’s automatic facial recognition tagging

Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.