London cops are using an unregulated, 98% inaccurate facial recognition tech
The London Metropolitan Police use a facial recognition system whose alerts have a 98% false positive rate; people falsely identified by the system are stopped, questioned and treated with suspicion.
The UK has a biometrics commissioner, Professor Paul Wiles, who laments the lack of any regulation of this technology, calling it “urgently needed”; these regulations are long promised, incredibly overdue, and the Home Office admits that they’re likely to be delayed beyond their revised June publication date.
The Met say that they don’t “arrest” people who are erroneously identified by the system. Rather, they “detain” them by refusing to allow them to leave and subjecting them to searches, etc.
Incredibly, the Met’s system is even worse than the South Wales Police’s facial recognition system, which has a comparatively impressive 92% failure rate.