UK police chiefs request £220 million annually for three years to invest in technology, including facial recognition. This funding aims to maximize efficiency by potentially freeing up 41,000 hours of police work daily and enhancing current systems, despite rising privacy concerns.
The UK’s police chiefs are asking the government for a substantial investment of £220 million (about $296 million) annually for the next three years. This funding is aimed at bolstering technology initiatives, particularly focusing on the expansion of live facial recognition systems. If approved, this investment could potentially release an additional 41,000 hours of police work daily in England and Wales, according to the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC).
Currently, live facial recognition (LFR) technology is showing promising results, with an average of 60 arrests facilitated per month in 2024. However, NPCC Chair Gavin Stephens pointed out that the police have spent the last decade mostly sustaining old systems instead of funding new innovations. “The vast majority of police force technology budgets are spent on aging systems and simply keeping the lights on. This has to change,” Stephens emphasized.
In the next financial year alone, the police plan to allocate nearly £2 billion (around $1.4 billion) towards digital technology and data analytics. The additional funds would be earmarked for diverse projects, including the enhancement of deepfake detection and the establishment of a national digital forensics platform to analyze digital devices more effectively.
Further goals include forming a national Data and Analytics Office aimed at improving data quality and fostering collaboration, as well as developing predictive analytics to identify potentially unsafe areas. In line with these investments, the NPCC has released an updated National Policing Digital Strategy for 2025-2030, which suggests that police officials establish strong governance and ethics frameworks for advanced technologies like AI and facial recognition.
Simultaneously, fixed LFR cameras are expected to debut in Croydon, south London, this summer as part of the increased usage of this controversial technology. Reports show that nearly 4.7 million faces were scanned with LFR in 2024, doubling the number from the previous year. Usage of LFR vans surged as well, with deployments rising from 63 instances in 2023 to at least 256 last year.
To enhance capability, a new roving unit of 10 LFR vans is set to be utilized across the nation. The Metropolitan Police, the largest police agency in the UK, currently operates four of these vans and other authorities are eyeing fixed camera placements in busy areas like the West End of London.
Moreover, the applications of retrospective facial recognition, which matches faces against the police national database (PND), have also seen an uptick. Instances increased from 138,720 in 2023 to 252,798 in the following year. There has been significant interaction with the UK passport database involving over 1,000 searches conducted in the last two years, which has led to growing scrutiny from both Parliament and oversight groups.
Adding to the complexity, police executed 110 searches through the Home Office immigration database last year as well. The Home Office is developing a national facial recognition system, named the Strategic Facial Matching (SFM) Project, intended to provide comprehensive database searches across multiple records, as indicated in media reports.
In summary, UK police are urgently seeking £220 million annually to support various technology initiatives, including the controversial expansion of facial recognition capabilities. As they aim to decrease time spent on existing tech and increase efficiency, scrutiny and concerns surrounding privacy and ethics continue to mount, particularly as their use of LFR significantly rises. Overall, the push for modernization in policing tools seems to be colliding with urgent oversight issues.
Original Source: www.biometricupdate.com
