{"id":238670,"date":"2026-05-03T15:26:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T19:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/03\/how-does-live-facial-recognition-work-and-how-many-uk-police-forces-use-it-facial-recognition\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T16:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T20:05:08","slug":"how-does-live-facial-recognition-work-and-how-many-uk-police-forces-use-it-facial-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/03\/how-does-live-facial-recognition-work-and-how-many-uk-police-forces-use-it-facial-recognition\/","title":{"rendered":"How does live facial recognition work and how many UK police forces use it? | Facial recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"

How does live facial recognition work and how many UK police forces use it? | Facial recognition<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/ng-interactive\/2026\/may\/03\/how-does-live-facial-recognition-work-and-how-many-uk-police-forces-use-it<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-03 15:26:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n

The Labour government thinks facial recognition technology is \u201cthe biggest breakthrough for catching criminals since DNA matching\u201d. It wants all police forces to use it and recently announced 40 new vans rigged with live facial recognition cameras to be deployed in town centres across England and Wales.<\/p>\n

Supporters say it streamlines police work and catches criminals. Opponents fear it violates civil liberties and can be biased against minorities.<\/p>\n

How does it work?<\/h2>\n

The simplest systems check faces captured on CCTV, mobile phones, dashcams, social media and doorbell cameras against mugshots held on the police national database. The technology typically works by superimposing images, measuring angles and distances between facial landmarks such as eyes, moles and scars to make a data-based check. This kind of retrospective facial recognition technology is used during investigations and is available to all forces in England and Wales.<\/p>\n

What about the surveillance cameras we are seeing more of in town centres?<\/h2>\n

This is live facial recognition (LFR) technology that lets police scan every passing face, capture its biometric data and use AI-powered software at a remote operations centre to compare it in real time with watchlists of people whom the police want to arrest or keep an eye on, perhaps because they are on probation. Some of these are mounted on clearly marked police vans but trials are under way in which some are fixed to lamp-posts.<\/p>\n

How do police use this live information?<\/h2>\n

If there is a match, the two photos, the suspect\u2019s name and alleged crime are pinged to mobile devices held by police officers waiting near the cameras. Their job is to instantly judge if the match is good and, if so, apprehend the person. The cameras tend to be switched on in three- to four-hour spells in busy town centres and at big events.<\/p>\n

What happens to the images of the passersby that are hoovered up<\/h2>\n

If a face is not matched to a wanted list, it is permanently deleted from the police…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How does live facial recognition work and how many UK police forces use it? |…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":238671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/01066da73eeea045f2f1be8a05e736470fbfa21f\/1_0_2499_2000\/master\/2499.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=9d4c065609051d816037d5230fec15d9","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238672,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238670\/revisions\/238672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}