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Short abstract

English and Welsh police forces are rapidly deploying live facial recognition despite limited regulation, posing a threat to fundamental rights. We assert that future regulation and best practices should prioritise the PAST principles: proportionality, accountability, safety, and transparency.

Long abstract

Police forces across Great Britain are adopting live facial recognition systems (LFR) rapidly; yet regulation is falling behind. The technology is notorious for its arbitrary deployment, enabling large-scale, real-time biometric-data processing and its dependence on broad watchlists, exacerbating targeted surveillance. LFR strains fundamental rights, including privacy, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly and association (Articles 8, 10, and 11, European Convention on Human Rights).

LFR carries misidentification risks which can amplify bias and violate anti-discrimination law. Certain demographics are disproportionately affected; for example, Met Police data shows Black men are flagged at rates exceeding their representation in London’s population and, in 2025, of the people misidentified by LFR in London, 80% of them were Black. The recent case of Shaun Thompson, a Black man stopped outside London Bridge station due to misidentification by LFR, illustrates this “stop and search on steroids.”

Currently, no specific regulation governing LFR in England and Wales exists. In the Bridges (2020) decision, the Court held that inadequate bias testing was done and LFR use breached privacy rights; this judicial guidance does not substitute for statutory regulation. In terms of potential progress, in December 2025, the Home Office launched a consultation on regulating biometric technologies, including LFR.

In this contribution, we examine the current state of LFR across policing in England and Wales, and the implications of the regulatory gap. We argue that the ever-present PAST principles: proportionality, accountability, safety, and transparency, should guide ongoing and future LFR regulation, and ground LFR best practices.