The Court of Appeals has ruled against South Wales Police on its use of automated facial recognition (AFR) technology.

This overturned a High Court verdict from last September, in a case brought by civil liberties campaigner Ed Bridges and civil rights group Liberty, claiming that rights had been breached by the police force’s pilot programme in Cardiff.

The appeal succeeded on three of the five grounds taken to the appeals court: that South Wales Police had interfered with his rights in accordance with the law; that it had not provided an adequate protection impact assessment; and that it had not complied with public sector equality duty.

The latter point included a statement that the police force had taken reasonable steps to ensure the Locate AFR software used did not include any bias on racial or gender grounds – although the court said there is no clear evidence that it is biased.

South Wales Police stated that it will not seek to appeal the judgement.

Bridges commented: “This technology is an intrusive and discriminatory mass surveillance tool - for three years now South Wales Police has been using it against hundreds of thousands of us, without our consent and often without our knowledge.

“We should all be able to use our public spaces without being subjected to oppressive surveillance.”

Liberty said this was the world’s first legal challenge against the use of AFR, stating that the decision should lead to the end of its use.

In July last year, the Home Office backed a series of trials by police forces, and early this year the Metropolitan Police said it was going to use live facial recognition in parts of London to combat crime.

This led the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to call for the live use of facial recognition technology to be suspended until its impact has been independently scrutinised and laws governing its application improved.

Commenting on the case, David Naylor, partner at law firm Wiggin, said that although this appeal did not rule that all AFR is illegal, for police forces to be able to use AFR legally, they will need to ensure that they do so without infringing an individual’s right to privacy under the European Convention on Human Rights, the deployment will need to comply with data protection laws, and it will be important to ensure that the AFR technology is not biased in terms of race or sex.

“Additionally, in the ruling, the Court of Appeals ruled that the South Wales Police had failed to have appropriate guidance in place with regard to the use of AFR and therefore the use was not in accordance with the law and breached the claimant’s right to privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”

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