Pair lose High Court challenge against Met use of Live Facial Recognition - as Sir Mark Rowley defends tech's rapid rollout
The High Court has thrown out a legal challenge brought by a pair over the Met's use of facial recognition technology in London
Two people have lost their High Court challenge against the Metropolitan Police over its use of Live Facial Recognition (LFR) cameras - as Sir Mark Rowley denied the force had moved too quickly with its expansion.
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Youth worker Shaun Thompson, who was misidentified by the technology, and Silkie Carlo of campaign group Big Brother Watch brought the claim.
They had concerns over the arbitrary or discriminatory use of facial recognition technology across London.
Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley warned "clumsy regulations" could "strangle" the progress of facial recognition at birth - as he denied the force had moved too quickly in its expansion of the technology.
Sir Mark made the comments after a High Court challenge brought against the Metropolitan Police over its use of facial recognition technology in London was thrown out by judges.
The pair's lawyers had argued in a hearing earlier this year that facial recognition is "similar to a DNA profile” and that installing the technology permanently would make it "impossible" for Londoners to travel without their biometric data being taken and processed.
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Scotland Yard defended the legal challenge, telling the court its live facial recognition policy was lawful.
Lord Justice Holgate and Mrs Justice Farbey said in a judgment on Tuesday: “In the context of promoting law and order in a large metropolis, the policy provides the claimants with an adequate indication of the circumstances in which LFR will be used and enables them to foresee, to a degree that is reasonable in the circumstances, the consequences of travelling in an area of London where LFR is in use.”
The judges also said that Mr Thompson and Ms Carlo’s human rights “have not been breached”.
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The judgement comes after the Government previously defended plans to expand the use of facial recognition across England and Wales.
Plans set out by the Home Office in January will increase the number of vans from 10 to 50 and make them available to all forces across the two nations.
Speaking to LBC News after the ruling, Met Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley denied that the force had increased use of the technology before enough laws and regulations around LFR had been put in place, stating "not at all".
"We've got a Human Rights Act, we've got all sorts of data protection and other privacy provisions that we have to work with.
"The myriad of laws and provisions that my team have looked at and made sure our policies work within, it's massively constraining and I don't complain about that. People's rights are important, so we've worked within those confines of those laws.
"Today's court judgement says the Met have got it right, that we are protecting people's rights as well as keeping them safe."
Asked if he felt the judgement gave the Met free rein to further roll out the technology across London, Sir Mark said the force would be "progressively increasing our use of it, but it's not going to become ubiquitous, it's not going to be on every street corner."
He said the judgement "underscored what we've put in place, which is a very careful set of policies to make sure that this massively powerful technology, that we're using it responsibly and carefully in a way that protects people's rights whilst taking thousands of dangerous people off the streets."
Asked to expand on his statement issued following the ruling calling on MPs to “carefully consider how they continue to enable, rather then over‑regulate” facial recognition technology, Sir Mark said: "It would be easy for clumsy regulation to strangle this at birth. This is a new capability.
"It's really got rolling seriously in London over the last couple of years because of the fantastic, innovative work of my team.
"Clumsy regulation could strangle that and all the benefits we're getting from it could be killed off."
Ms Carlo said the judgment was “disappointing” but that the legal battle was “far from over”, with Big Brother Watch crowdfunding for a bid to challenge the ruling.
She said: “There has never been a more important time to stand up for the public’s rights against dystopian surveillance tech that turns us into walking ID cards and treats us like a nation of suspects."
Mr Thompson said that LFR was “like stop and search on steroids” and that he would seek to challenge the ruling to “protect Londoners” from “mass surveillance”.
Separate Freedom of Information requests submitted by the Press Association suggest gaps in the force’s oversight of the technology.
In its response to the request, the Met said it has no system to identify complaints specifically relating to facial recognition, meaning any such cases could only be found by manually reviewing tens of thousands of complaint records.
It has also said it cannot readily track the outcomes of arrests made following facial recognition matches, including whether they result in charges or convictions, without examining individual case files across multiple systems.
Dan Squires KC, for Mr Thompson and Ms Carlo, told a hearing in January that the force used facial recognition 231 times last year and scanned around four million faces, scanning more than 50,000 faces in four-and-a-half hours in Oxford Circus in December.
He said the technology turns people’s facial characteristics into coded data, which is then compared with people on a “watch list”.
Anya Proops KC, for the Met, said in written submissions that locating individuals wanted by police was “akin to looking for stray needles in an enormous, exceptionally dense haystack”, and that facial recognition can “spot the ‘needles’ in a way that officers simply cannot”.
She continued that in 2025, up until September 18, officers made 801 arrests “specifically as a result of LFR” and that the intrusion into the public’s privacy is “only minimal”, adding that data taken from people not on a watchlist “is deleted a fraction of a second after it is created”.
In their 47-page ruling, Lord Justice Holgate and Mrs Justice Farbey said: “Any intrusion to which the claimants are exposed by the deployment of LFR is not directed at them in the sense that, save for unintended errors, the Metropolitan Police has no interest in their biometrics or in engaging with them.”
They also said that the “risk and potential scope for discrimination on grounds of race was no more than faintly asserted” at the hearing, adding: “We are not able to accept, on the thin submissions advanced before us, that concerns about discrimination infect the legality of the policy.”
Policing Minister, Sarah Jones said: “I welcome today’s ruling because there can be no true liberty when people live in fear of crime in their communities. Live facial recognition only locates specifically wanted people - law abiding citizens have nothing to fear.
“This technology puts dangerous rapists and murderers behind bars – and I question any group who call that uncivil. “We are rolling out facial recognition across the country with record investment to keep communities safe.”
Sir Mark Rowley said: “The courts have confirmed our approach is lawful. The public supports its use. It works. And it helps us keep Londoners safe.
“The question is no longer whether we should use live facial recognition – it’s why we would choose not to.”
Speaking to the Press Association at Charing Cross Police Station, he added “nobody has been arrested” as a result of misidentification through live facial recognition technology.
“This technology is far more accurate than you or I.”
He continued: “If we do get misidentification, and we’ve had I think 12 in a couple of years out of three million people walking past the cameras – that’s far better than a human being would do – not one of them has been arrested and many of them haven’t even been stopped because it has been so obvious.”
He continued: “it’s very safe and if you’re nervous about your civil liberties it’s important you know that your image is deleted in less than a second after you’ve walked past the camera.
“That’s different from the CCTV systems in town centres which keep your face for a month.”