Lawyer Monthly Magazine - July 2019 Edition

“ “ “ “ “ “ ethnicities and races, there is potential for false matches such as these changing society and the nature of public spaces. Adding to this, speaking to Julian Hayes, Partner at BCL Solicitors, he mentions how at the 2017 Notting Hill Carnival, FRT was wrong 98% of the time, risking misidentification and miscarriages of justice. He said: “To mitigate the risks posed by such tools, it’s important we fully consider the implications of their deployment by the authorities.” From freedom of expression to discrimination, the matter at hand remains: is FRT well regulated? In short, no. Lecturer in law, Dr Purshouse argues that Parliament should set out rules governing the scope of the power of the police to deploy FRT surveillance in public spaces to ensure consistency across police forces. He says “As it currently stands, police forces trialling FRT are left to come up with divergent, and sometimes troubling, policies and practices for the execution of their FRT operations .” With there being no legal framework, there is little stopping police forces from taking images from the internet or social media accounts to populate their ‘watch lists’. As Julian expands, “Algorithmic policing, with its efficiency and cost-saving potential, is undoubtedly here to stay, and if it prevents crime and assists in apprehending offenders, most people would encourage its use by law enforcement. However, if the criminal justice system is to retain the trust and confidence of society, it’s essential that we appreciate the limitations of AI in its various guises, from FRT to futuristic recidivism forecasting. The privacy implications are significant and the technology is not infallible; it must not be seen as a panacea.” In essence, policy is the problem. There is a fine line between security and infringing citizens’ privacy if there is not any legislation stating what is and is not acceptable use of FRT. We can only wait to see what the court decides to those legally challenging its use and if the government outlines the policies regarding FRT and its public usage in the upcoming years. They released a statement, saying: Facial recognition technology captures the biometric data of everyone who passes the cameras, violating our right to privacy and undermining our freedom of expression. Goulding added to this, saying: Facial recognition is an inherently intrusive technology that breaches our privacy rights. It risks fundamentally altering our public spaces, forcing us to monitor where we go and who with, seriously undermining our freedom of expression… It is now for police and parliamentarians to face up to the facts: facial recognition represents an inherent risk to our rights, and has no place on our streets. Freedom of expression aside, (yes, there is still more factors to ponder), Liberty also bring to light another pressing issue: The technology also discriminates against women and people of colour – it disproportionately misidentifies those people, making them more likely to be subject to a police stop due to an incorrect match. In fact, the BBC reported that Black and minority ethnic people could be falsely identified and face questioning, due to the fact that the police have failed to test how well their systems deal with non- white faces after missing chances to test how well their systems deal with such situations. With the risk of there being a bias towards certain