“Three senior judges said that South Wales Police had violated the right to privacy under the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as data protection laws and duties to address concerns about racial or sex discrimination” during deployments in 2017 and 2018.[1]
According to a report in The Independent, the judges ruled that, under the UK Data Protection Act of 2018, police were required to gain consent before using facial recognition technology and that police illegally used the data gained to further criminal investigations. The judges also said that the police “had violated the Public Sector Equality Duty that aims to guard against discrimination.”
Despite the ruling, facial recognition technology is widely used in the UK, and the South Wales Police also stated that they have changed their tactics since 2018 and are in discussions with authorities on how to best use the technology. Facial recognition technology has faced multiple legal challenges, including, most recently, a lawsuit in Illinois[2] seeking a court order to forbid scraping photos without explicit consent.
