A coalition of 65 parliamentarians and 31 rights and race equality organisations have called for an urgent stop to the use facial recognition surveillance by the police and private companies.

According to Big Brother Watch, a privacy organisation which is leading the campaign, the coalition has “serious concerns” about the “incompatibility with human rights” and “discriminatory impacts” of facial recognition surveillance.

The coalition also criticises the “lack of sufficient legal basis” and “lack of a democratic mandate” to justify the use of the technology.

MPs who have joined the coalition include the leader of the Liberal Democrats Sir Ed Davey, Green MP Caroline Lucas and former shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti. Other organisations supporting the campaign include Amnesty International, the Institute of Race Relations and Northern Police Monitoring Group.

Earlier this week, the UK government announced its plans to make all 45 million UK passport photos accessible and searchable by police with facial recognition technology in relation to minor crimes such as bicycle thefts and shoplifting.

Big Brother Watch said the UK’s approach to the technology differs from governments around the world who are considering whether to prohibit the use of live facial recognition. The European Parliament has endorsed a blanket ban on police using AI-powered facial recognition surveillance under the AI Act and several US cities have banned the technology.

The privacy organisation claims that the use of live facial recognition has increased in the retail sector and in some police forces. It added that police have previously populated watchlists with protestors not wanted for any offences, and people with mental health issues not suspected of any offences.

Big Brother Watch says that research has found that “over 89 per cent” of UK police facial recognition alerts to date have wrongly identified members of the public as people of interest.

“With the Government now planning to turn all of our passport photos into mugshots for facial recognition scanning, yet again absent any democratic scrutiny, this intervention could not come at a more important time,” said Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch.

He added: “As hosts of the AI summit in autumn, the UK should show leadership in adopting new technologies in a rights-respecting way, rather than a way that mirrors the dystopian surveillance practices of Saudi Arabia and China. There must be an urgent stop to live facial recognition, parliamentary scrutiny and a much wider democratic debate before we introduce such a privacy-altering technology to British life.”

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