Overview

• The Metropolitan Police are running live facial recognition at two approach points to Notting Hill Carnival to identify people on police watchlists.
• Police leaders say using a 0.64 sensitivity setting removes statistically significant bias, a conclusion Prof Pete Fussey rejects as unsupported by the National Physical Laboratory tests.
• The NPL study found bias at 0.56 and recorded seven false positives at 0.6, all involving ethnic minority subjects, before reporting no statistically significant bias at 0.6 or higher.
• The Equality and Human Rights Commission has deemed the Met’s policy unlawful and civil liberties groups warn of a chilling effect, with 11 organisations urging the force to drop Carnival deployment.
• The Met cites more than 1,000 arrests since early 2024, a false positive rate of roughly one in 33,000, and officer verification before any detention, as a legal challenge from a misidentified Londoner heads to the High Court in January.