Met says technology will not be used to target protesters or activists, but campaigners say use is ‘extremely worrying’
The Metropolitan police has been accused of using the coronation to stage the biggestThe force said on Wednesday it intended to use the controversial technology, which scans faces and matches them against a list of people police want for alleged crimes and could identify convicted terrorists mingling in the crowds.
The Met insisted the technology would not be used to quell lawful protest or target activists. But campaign groups do not believe them. Britain’s biggest force said: “It is not used to identify people who are linked to, or have been convicted of, being involved in protest activity.” Fussey said: “A surveillance deployment for the coronation would likely be the biggest live facial recognition operation ever conducted by the MPS, and probably the largest ever seen in Europe., the sum total of ‘recognition opportunities’ for the 10 operations between 2016 and 2019 was 180,000.deployments since 2019 have been concentrated in Newham and the West End and, to my knowledge, have not focused on large mass attendance events.
“Now it’s likely that facial recognition will be used to monitor anyone who wants to exercise their right to protest – an extremely worrying development.” A later Met statement added it would also look for “those under relevant offender management programmes in order to keep the public safe”, a probable reference to convicted terrorists, some of whom police and probation officers have visited in the run-up to the coronation, the Guardian understands, to check – for instance – that they are living where they claim to be.said: “Live facial recognition is an authoritarian mass surveillance tool that turns the public into walking ID cards.
Asked whether police would consider someone on the route holding an anti-monarchy placard as meriting removal, Commander Karen Findlay, in charge of the police operation, said: “No.”
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