THE Home Office has admitted that facial recognition technology used by police has produced more incorrect matches for black and Asian people than for whites when operating on certain settings, prompting fresh concerns over plans for wider national use.
In a statement responding to the latest tests carried out by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the Home Office said it was “more likely to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its search results”.
The department added: “The Home Office takes the findings of the report seriously and we have already taken action. A new algorithm has been independently tested and procured, which has no statistically significant bias. It will be tested early next year and will be subject to evaluation.
“Given the importance of this issue, we have also asked the police inspectorate, alongside the forensic science regulator, to review law enforcement’s use of facial recognition. They will assess the effectiveness of the mitigations, which the National Police Chiefs’ Council supports.”
The admission follows detailed NPL testing of retrospective facial recognition searches on the police national database. Analysts working at a lower accuracy setting found that the false-positive identification rate was far higher for Asian and black subjects compared with white subjects.
The report said: “The FPIR for white subjects (0.04 per cent) is lower than that for Asian subjects (4 per cent) and black subjects (5.5 per cent).” False matches for black women were particularly high, with a rate of 9.9 per cent.
Police and crime commissioners (PCCs) warned the findings showed an “inbuilt bias” and criticised the delay in publishing the results.
In a joint statement, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners said: “Technology has been deployed into operational policing without adequate safeguards in place.” It added that while there was no evidence that individuals had been harmed, this appeared to be “more by luck than design”.
Civil liberties campaigners said the figures raised serious questions about the use of the technology in live settings. Liberty warned that the “damaging real-life impacts” of false identifications could fall heavily on people of colour. Its policy officer, Charlie Whelton, said: “The government must halt the rapid rollout of facial recognition technology until these [safeguards] are in place.”
Conservative MP David Davis said plans to place cameras at stadiums, shopping centres and stations would usher in “big brother Britain”. He argued that “something of this magnitude should not happen without full and detailed debate in the House of Commons”.
The debate comes as the Home Office opened a 10-week public consultation on expanding police access, including proposals to draw on passport and driving licence images.
Surveys released by the department found that black and mixed-ethnicity respondents were significantly more likely to avoid areas where live facial recognition was used.
Officials say stronger oversight and a new algorithm will help reduce risks, while the government argues the technology can help catch serious offenders.
