CCTV is seen by some as a problematic and Orwellian technology that infringes on civil liberties. Such claims are usually made based on the perceived ineffectiveness of the technology; now, an independent report seems to back up these claims, finding that 81% of people flagged up in London on the Met Police’s CCTV network are actually innocent of any crime.
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Met Police has been using its live facial recognition (LFR) technology since August 2016 and has conducted ten trials in various places around the capital. The study which was carried out by academics at the University of Essex, and commissioned by Scotland Yard, observed the accuracy of the system at six out of ten of the trials and found that of 42 matches that were flagged up, just eight were verified as correct meaning just 19% of detections were correct.
