A coalition of civil rights and anti-racism organisations has called on Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley to abandon plans to deploy live facial recognition technology at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival, warning the surveillance system contains “inherent racial prejudices”.
The 11 groups, including Liberty, the Runnymede Trust, Big Brother Watch, Race on the Agenda, and Human Rights Watch, sent a letter to Rowley cautioning that implementing instant face-matching technology during an event celebrating African-Caribbean culture would intensify concerns about discriminatory policing and misuse of government authority.
The correspondence, obtained by The Guardian, states: “The choice to deploy LFR at Notting Hill carnival unfairly targets the community that carnival exists to celebrate.”
Coalition Cites Institutional Racism Findings
The signatories referenced Baroness Casey’s independent review, which concluded the Metropolitan Police was institutionally racist, noting that public confidence in the force has suffered significant damage due to prejudiced policing practices.
The organisations warned: “Targeting Notting Hill carnival with live facial recognition technology will only exacerbate concerns about abuses of state power and racial discrimination within your force.”
The coalition highlighted that the technology demonstrates reduced precision when identifying women and individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds, a finding supported by a 2023 report from the National Physical Laboratory which found that at certain settings, the Met’s technology was less accurate for women and non-white people.
Legal Challenge Highlights System Failures
The concerns come as anti-knife crime advocate Shaun Thompson has initiated High Court proceedings against the Metropolitan Police following an incident where facial recognition technology incorrectly flagged him as a criminal.
Thompson, a Black British volunteer with Street Fathers youth advocacy group, was encircled by officers and detained for thirty minutes while returning from community work aimed at reducing knife crime. Police demanded his fingerprints during the wrongful stop at London Bridge station.
“I work with Street Fathers which helps the youth of London. I patrol to help keep kids safe and protected and to get knives off the streets,” Thompson said. “They were telling me I was a wanted man, trying to get my fingerprints and trying to scare me with arrest, even though I knew and they knew the computer had got it wrong.”
Thompson has compared the technology’s discriminatory effects to “stop and search on steroids,” according to the letter. His judicial review, supported by Big Brother Watch, is due to be heard in January 2026 and represents the first major legal challenge against the Met’s use of live facial recognition technology.
Previous Deployments Spark Controversy
The campaigners highlighted that officers previously operated the system using configurations later proven to disproportionately misidentify Black individuals, with police permitted to self-regulate their usage of the technology.
The Met’s use of facial recognition at Notting Hill Carnival is not without precedent. The force trialled the technology at the event in 2016 and 2017, but scrapped its use following widespread outcry on grounds of discrimination and bias. Privacy group Liberty gained access to observe the police facial recognition van during one deployment and reported multiple false matches.
This year marks the first time since those controversial trials that the Met plans to deploy LFR at the carnival, despite ongoing concerns about accuracy and discrimination.
Ministerial Expansion Plans
The coalition’s concerns follow ministerial announcements about expanding facial recognition van deployments to nine police forces throughout England and Wales. The Home Office announced that ten new “cutting edge” vans are being rolled out, adding to those already in use by London’s Metropolitan Police and forces in South Wales.
Seven additional forces will gain access to LFR vans: Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Surrey and Sussex (jointly), and Thames Valley and Hampshire (jointly).
Rebecca Vincent, interim director at Big Brother Watch, described the expansion as “frightening,” adding: “Live facial recognition turns every passerby into a walking barcode and treats us all as a nation of suspects. This move is not only worrying for our privacy rights, it is worrying for our democracy.”
Police Defend Technology’s Effectiveness
The Metropolitan Police maintains that facial recognition technology represents an essential tool for public safety. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Matt Ward acknowledged “misconceptions” exist within Black and minority ethnic communities but defended the system’s deployment.
Ward emphasised the force would position cameras at carnival entry and exit points, beyond the event’s perimeter, to help officers locate individuals presenting safety risks. “It is right that we make the best use of available technology to support officers to do their job more effectively,” he said.
The Met reports 580 arrests through facial recognition for serious crimes including rape, domestic violence, knife offences and robbery, with 52 sex offenders detained for breaching conditions. So far in 2025, the force has carried out 111 LFR deployments, resulting in 512 arrests.
Ward added: “Independent testing by the National Physical Laboratory found that at the thresholds the MPS uses the system, it is accurate and balanced with regard to ethnicity and gender.”
Crime Concerns at Carnival
The Met says it plans to use the cameras on settings that do not show racial bias and will deploy them “outside the boundaries of the event” to “identify and intercept” people who endanger public safety. It will also use metal detectors and conduct stop-and-searches at the busiest entrance points.
Crime has been a persistent concern at the carnival, which attracts more than two million people each year. Last year, police made 334 arrests, 61 officers were injured and two people were killed in separate knife attacks.
A report earlier this week warned that the festival should be ticketed or moved to Hyde Park in order to reduce crime and alleviate the risk of a “mass crush on the scale of the Hillsborough disaster”.
Lack of Legislative Framework
Critics note that police use of facial recognition is not enabled by any specific piece of legislation and has not been authorised by parliament. Police forces across England and Wales have been left to write their own policies about how and where it can be used.
Earlier this month, the Home Secretary said “a proper, clear governance framework” was needed for police use of live facial recognition, and said her department was in the process of developing such a framework with stakeholders.
Several parliamentary inquiries have already called for regulation of the technology, while a coalition of parliamentarians and rights groups have previously called for an urgent stop to the use of live facial recognition, citing concerns about injustice, democratic rights, and an insufficient legislative basis to monitor the public with the technology.
The controversy over facial recognition at Notting Hill Carnival highlights broader debates about surveillance, racial justice and policing in modern Britain, with civil liberties groups warning that without proper oversight and regulation, the technology risks entrenching existing biases and undermining community trust.
Follow for more updates on Britannia Daily
Image Credit (Shortened):
Notting Hill Carnival 2014 – by David Sedlecký, licensed under CC BY‑SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. (commons.wikimedia.org)
