Croydon Green Party stands together with groups including Big Brother Watch and Liberty to call for a halt to Live Facial Recognition operations nationwide.
In March 2025 the Metropolitan Police announced that by the summer, Croydon would see one of the UK’s first permanent installations of a live facial recognition camera system on North End, part of Croydon’s high street.
There are no laws regarding live facial recognition, which means there are no safeguards to its use by law enforcement. To Croydon residents, live facial recognition represents a gross invasion of privacy, to which we’ve had no formal opportunity to object.
Whether you’re a Croydon resident or not, please join us in taking action against this erosion of our rights.
1. Sign the petition
The civil rights group Liberty needs your signature for a petition that calls for basic safeguards.
2. Email your MP
You can write to your MP and let them know you oppose live facial recognition. The easiest way to contact your MP is with writetothem.com. It’s quick and totally free.
The UK civil rights group Big Brother Watch has a pre-written message, which you can personalise.
See the pre-written message
As your constituent, I am writing to you to express my concerns about the police’s growing use of live facial recognition in the UK. I would appreciate if you could raise the concerns I have about the use of this technology and its impact on human rights and civil liberties with the Home Secretary and DSIT Secretary respectively.
Live facial recognition works by creating a ‘faceprint’ of everyone who passes in front of the camera — processing biometric data as sensitive as a fingerprint. This form of surveillance is deeply intrusive, often subjecting many thousands of innocent people to biometric identity checks without justification. Seven police forces around the UK are currently using this technology despite there being no specific law which governs its use, with forces such as Essex Police, the Metropolitan Police and South Wales Police continuing to use LFR on a regular basis in a way that affects millions of us as we live and travel around the UK.
Uses of live facial recognition have resulted in privacy and data breaches, misidentifications, racial discrimination, and a significant chilling effect on freedom of expression and assembly. In 2020, South Wales Police was found to have deployed live facial recognition surveillance unlawfully (Bridges v SWP) and the Metropolitan Police is also facing a judicial review brought by a Black victim of live facial recognition misidentification which took place earlier this year. Other victims of live facial recognition harassment and errors are initiating legal action in the retail context.
In recent years, parliamentarians across parties in Westminster, members of the Senedd, rights and equalities groups and technology experts across the globe have called for a stop to the use of this technology. The only detailed inquiry into the use of live facial recognition by a parliamentary committee called for a stop to its use. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) called for the UK Government to suspend live facial recognition in 2020.
Governments across the democratic world are legislating to ban and significantly restrict the use of live facial recognition surveillance, for both law enforcement and private companies – but successive governments have left the UK behind. The EU’s AI Act will introduce an almost total ban on the use of live facial recognition, with law enforcement exceptions for only the most serious crimes and on the condition of prior judicial approval for each deployment. In the US, multiple states have banned law enforcement from using the technology entirely. The UK risks becoming an outlier in the democratic world, instead following the approach of countries like Russia and China, which have heavily invested in this technology to the detriment of their citizens’ rights and freedoms.
The legal vacuum when it comes to the police’s use of live facial recognition technology cannot continue. The UK must follow the example set by European states and introduce stringent restrictions on the use of this surveillance technology akin to the EU’s AI Act. For more information, please contact Big Brother Watch at info@bigbrotherwatch.org.uk
As my constituency’s MP, I would appreciate if you could raise the concerns I have about the use of this technology and its impact on human rights and civil liberties with the Home Secretary and DSIT Secretary respectively.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
3. Donate to the legal challenge
Civil Liberties campaign group is currently crowdfunding for a legal challenge to stop live facial recognition operations in the UK.