Overview

• Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission has been granted permission to intervene in a judicial review brought by Silkie Carlo and Shaun Thompson after Thompson was wrongly identified by live facial recognition.
• The Met says cameras will operate on approaches to the West London carnival to spot wanted suspects, with images of non-matches deleted automatically.
• Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley defends the technology as proportionate and non-discriminatory, citing independent testing and more than 1,000 offender apprehensions since early 2024.
• Eleven civil-liberties and anti-racist groups have urged the force to drop the plan, warning of racial bias and describing the tool as mass surveillance at a celebration of the African-Caribbean community.
• The Met argues it has a legal basis under common law alongside data-protection and equality duties, while the home secretary has backed wider national expansion of the technology.