In January 2020 London’s Metropolitan Police announced it would begin using live facial recognition (LFR) operationally, making it one of the first major Western police forces to deploy real-time face matching in public spaces as a standing capability rather than a trial. The technology had been tested in pilots since 2016; the 2020 announcement moved it into routine policing.
The Met describes the mechanism plainly. LFR cameras are focused on a defined area, and as people pass through, their images are streamed to the system and compared against a watchlist. Each deployment uses a “bespoke, intelligence-led watchlist, created no more than 24 hours in advance and deleted immediately afterwards.” The force says deployments are clearly signposted and highly visible, that the technology “never replaces professional judgement,” and that trained officers assess any alert on the ground before deciding whether to act.
Live facial recognition has been legally contested in the UK. A 2020 Court of Appeal ruling in a case against South Wales Police found that force’s use unlawful on data-protection and equality grounds, prompting tighter policies. The Met has since pointed to a more recent judicial review it won, in which a court concluded its policy “complies with human rights law” and contains “clear, precise and effective safeguards.”
The Met has reported aggressive operational results from later fixed-camera deployments - for example, 173 arrests across 24 operations in one pilot, the equivalent of one arrest every 35 minutes. Supporters cite those figures and accompanying drops in local crime; critics point to the demographic error gaps documented in face recognition research and to the civil-liberties implications of scanning everyone who walks past a camera. The Met deployment became a central reference point in the global debate over police use of the technology.