Live facial recognition technology creates 'supercharged CCTV' that could be used recklessly, Information Commission warns

Plans to allow CCTV cameras to recognise people's faces in realtime could be used "inappropriately, excessively or even recklessly", the Information Commissioner has warned. In recent years, authorities have been rolling out new kinds of facial recognition, with the promise that it would be able to spot dangerous people in real-time. But privacy activists and others have warned that it is a vast invasion of privacy, could be used to create watchlists of people, might falsely accuse people because of racism and other biases and unfair practices. There is still time for authorities to change their mind and avoid the vast dangers that the technology could produce, the head of the watchdog warned. "We're at a crossroads right now, we in the UK and other countries around the world see the deployment of live facial recognition and I think it's still at an early enough stage that it's not too late to put the genie back in the bottle," Commissioner Elizabeth Denham told the PA news agency.