How does live facial recognition work and how many UK police forces use it?
The Labour government thinks facial recognition technology is “the biggest breakthrough for catching criminals since DNA matching”,It wants all police forces to use it and recently announced 40 new vans rigged with live facial recognition cameras to be deployed in town centres across England and Wales,Supporters say it streamlines police work and catches criminals,Opponents fear it violates civil liberties and can be biased against minorities,The simplest systems check faces captured on CCTV, mobile phones, dashcams, social media and doorbell cameras against mugshots held on the police national database.
The technology typically works by superimposing images, measuring angles and distances between facial landmarks such as eyes, moles and scars to make a data-based check.This kind of retrospective facial recognition technology is used during investigations and is available to all forces in England and Wales.This is live facial recognition (LFR) technology that lets police scan every passing face, capture its biometric data and use AI-powered software at a remote operations centre to compare it in real time with watchlists of people whom the police want to arrest or keep an eye on, perhaps because they are on probation.Some of these are mounted on clearly marked police vans but trials are under way in which some are fixed to lamp-posts.If there is a match, the two photos, the suspect’s name and alleged crime are pinged to mobile devices held by police officers waiting near the cameras.
Their job is to instantly judge if the match is good and, if so, apprehend the person.The cameras tend to be switched on in three- to four-hour spells in busy town centres and at big events.If a face is not matched to a wanted list, it is permanently deleted from the police system.This is the case for almost every scan.Anyone who attended the British Grand Prix at Silverstone since 2023 is likely to have been among the nearly one million faces scanned over just a few days by Northamptonshire police.
Whether it was worth it in this case is another question,The mass surveillance at Silverstone triggered zero alerts,Thirteen police forces in England and Wales have or are using LFR,The Met in London is the biggest user,It started in 2020, but data since April 2023 shows more than 6.
6 million faces have been scanned.In the last two years, use has been accelerated dramatically.In 2026 so far, 1.7m scans have resulted in 44 arrests.In the first three months of this year, South Wales police scanned more than 230,000 faces in the centres of Cardiff, Swansea, Bridgend and Merthyr Tydfil with 10 matches and five arrests.
In 2024 and 2025, Essex police scanned 2,2 million faces and made 117 arrests,A total of 60,000 residents of Staines, Camberley, Ashford and Epsom have been scanned in 2026 by Surrey police’s LFR cameras leading to two arrests,Other forces that have used LFR are Leicestershire, north Wales, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Bedfordshire, Suffolk, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and Sussex,The technology has historically been more likely to make errors with people from minority ethnic backgrounds.
One study of an early system showed it made no errors with light-skinned males but erred in one in five cases with dark-skinned females.It appears to have improved.A study published in March of deployments by Essex police showed about half of the people on a watchlist were correctly identified and incorrect identifications were extremely rare, but the system was more likely to correctly identify men than women and it was “statistically significantly more likely to correctly identify black participants than participants from other ethnic groups”.Another issue is where it is deployed.Research by the London assembly found that, over one recent year, more than half of the technology’s deployments took place in areas with a higher proportion of black residents than the London average.
Police forces face scrutiny from a wide range of bodies whose job it is, only partially, to worry about facial recognition.They include the information commissioner, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the courts – which last month backed the Metropolitan police’s use of the technology.Elected police and crime commissioners, the forensics regulator, the investigatory powers commissioner and the biometrics and surveillance camera commissioners also have oversight.It is a scattered picture and the government is consulting on a new legal framework.The number of faces scanned every week is expected to keep rising and Police Scotland, which does not use LFR, plans to start using it.
Police intend to start using their phones to scan faces in limited circumstances including where the subject has refused to provide their details, if they are unconscious, incapable owing to drink or drugs, or dead.This is known as operator-initiated facial recognition.The next frontier could be cameras that analyse human movements for behaviours such as loitering or aggressive postures, or even facial expressions to infer emotional states.The government’s consultation on a new legal framework asks for views on whether it should cover “technology that analyses the body and its movements to infer information about the person, such as their emotions or actions”.
‘We have to mock the site’s insanity’: comedian Tim Heidecker on the allure of becoming Infowars’ new boss
If you’ve tuned in to Infowars over the years, you might have heard a very angry man screaming about the 2020 election being stolen for “reanimated corpse” Joe Biden, or chemicals in the water turning frogs gay, or the Sandy Hook school shooting, which killed 20 children and six staff members, being faked. Founded in 1999, Alex Jones’s Infowars has long been a platform for toxic conspiracy theories with real-life consequences, in addition to weird dietary supplements. But if the Onion has its way, the InfoWars of the future will have a very different impact.The satirical newspaper has been working for several years to take over the site, amid legal battles over Jones’s false claims about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. Pending a Texas court’s approval, the platform could soon be in the hands of the Onion and a newly installed creative director, comedian Tim Heidecker, known for his surreal sketches and mockery of the far right
Prince’s death made me upend my life and move to his home town
The star’s potent sexuality made him my ‘secret friend’ but, with my career in the arts stalling, his death led me to the life-changing decision to move to Minneapolis and maintain his legacyI distinctly remember the first time I heard Prince. I was a dreamy, artistic child growing up in 80s rural Australia, feeling completely out of place. One day, I turned towards the cassette radio in my bedroom, hearing something totally different to the rock music I had grown up with – something electric and alive. It was Prince. My body moved
The Devil Wears Prada 2 to Lenny Henry: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
Meryl Streep stars in the long-awaited sequel to the fashion-industry hit, and the comic, actor and bona fide national treasure returns to the stageThe Devil Wears Prada 2Out nowSequels, for spring? Groundbreaking. OK, but this just happens to be one of the most anticipated sequels of the last decade, with Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt returning to their respective roles of high-fashion supervillain Miranda Priestly, journalist Andy Sachs and type-A nightmare Emily Charlton.HokumOut nowAdam Scott (Severance) stars in this Irish-set haunted-house horror about a man whose journey to spread his parents’ ashes involves some unexpectedly spooky twists and turns. Irish former electrician Damian McCarthy writes and directs his first Hollywood feature after a couple of lower-budget homegrown hits.Wild FoxesOut nowValéry Carnoy directs this French coming-of-age drama which premiered at Cannes last year to prize-winning effect
Peter Kay show stopped and 19-year-old in custody after ‘suspicious bag’ found
A live show by comedian Peter Kay in Birmingham has been stopped after a “potential suspicious bag” was found around the venue.The Utilita Arena Birmingham was evacuated and a 19-year-old man was taken into custody, West Midlands police said on Friday evening.The force said: “We are assisting with an evacuation at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham after a potential suspicious bag was found.“A 19-year-old man is in custody and as a precaution the site is currently subject of a search. We will provide further updates when we can
Jimmy Kimmel: ‘Trump has three wars going on right now – Iranians, Ukrainians and comedians’
Late-night hosts reacted to yet another call by Donald Trump for Jimmy Kimmel to be fired, more US floundering in Iran and the supreme court effectively dismantling the Voting Rights Act.Jimmy Kimmel woke up on Thursday morning to, somehow, yet another call from the president for his show to be cancelled. As Donald Trump posted on Truth Social: “When is ABC Fake News Network firing seriously unfunny Jimmy Kimmel, who incompetently presides over one of the Lowest Rated shows on Television? People are angry. It better be soon!!! President DJT”“Or what?” Kimmel laughed on Thursday evening. “If incompetently presiding over not just one of but the lowest rating in history is the reason I should be fired, we should both be out of a job
The Guide #241: Wintour isn’t coming … and her Devil Wears Prada absence is for the best
The Devil Wears Prada 2 has a cameo list more stuffed than the fashion cupboard at the film’s fictional Runway magazine. It runs the gamut from eye-poppingly famous (Lady Gaga, Donatella Versace, Naomi Campbell) to if-you-know-you-know industry famous (Tina Brown, say, or a host of supermodels familiar to anyone on the Paris front row) to “huh, how did they get there?” (Late Show bandleader Jon Batiste, or Chicken Shop Date’s Amelia Dimoldenberg, already on her second cameo of the year after a super-quick turn in an episode of Industry). Missing, though, is the one cameo everyone hoped for, the white – or should that be cerulean? – whale herself: Anna Wintour, Vogue top dog and heavy inspiration in the film for Meryl Streep’s formidable sadist-in-chief, Miranda Priestly.Wintour, though absent from the original Devil Wears Prada, always hovered over proceedings – it’s said that a number of designers steered clear of cameo appearances in the first film for fear of offending her – and Wintour herself, though present at its premiere, always studiously avoided discussing the film. But in recent months there seems to have been a sudden thawing – fond words from Wintour about the film on the New Yorker podcast, then a shock appearance alongside Streep on a Vogue cover – prompting speculation that the be-fringed one might deign to appear in the sequel
‘We have let them come on to our ground’: Labour fights off Green gains in Leeds
Lucy Powell says Labour has ‘no magic bullet’ as MPs brace for heavy losses in local elections
Reform UK council backs release of beavers amid party row over rewilding
Reform frontbench promotes JCB’s pothole machine after firm’s £200,000 donation
Polanski takes combative approach as Greens enter media spotlight
Badenoch apologises after Bloody Sunday footage used in post defending UK veterans