In a letter addressed to the Home Secretary from Baroness Hamwee, chair of the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee, articulated the committee’s worries, and called for immediate legislative intervention. 

Part of the urgency comes because of the potential benefits of live facial recognition (LFR) tech as a policing tool. However, its expansion without proper oversight raises significant ethical and legal dilemmas.

This is all on the backdrop of a Court of Appeals ruling back in 2020, against the South Wales Police deeming their use of LFR was unlawful due to breaches of privacy rights.

The review notes scepticism that police have stated this judgement accepts common law as a sufficient legal basis for the technology’s use, and that Met Police have also cited the College of Policing’s Authorised Professional Practice as supporting its deployments.

“We note that, in contrast to the evidence we have received from the police, the Court of Appeal in the Bridges judgement expressed concerns about the ‘fundamental deficiencies’ in the current legal framework arguing that ‘too much discretion is currently left to individual police officers’ and that it is not ‘clear that there are any criteria for determining where (Automated Facial Recognition) can be deployed,’” Committee members write 

According to Hamwee, numerous police forces now persist in deploying the technology, citing the 2020 ruling as a legal mandate for their initiatives.

“Whilst we acknowledge that the police forces have updated their policies and procedures following the Court of Appeal judgement in Bridges in 2020, this turned on a narrow point on equalities,” read the letter. 

 “Government should not wait for the legality of LFR deployment to be tested again in the courts.”

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The House of Lords is therefore calling for concrete legislative action to rectify the current regulatory landscape.

The letter issued by the House of Lords delineated a series of specific demands such as an LFR training programme, national regulation and guidelines of extensive crowd-screening activities, pre-deployment communication practises, and embedded explainability features to mitigate the risk of human error. 

“We also believe that the Government must lead a wider public debate about the use of LFR technology, as used now and as it develops, to ensure public confidence and support,” read the report.

The committee also says Registration of algorithms in the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard (ATRS) should be mandatory.