London police vow to "consider" ethics report on facial recognition tech that rights group calls illegal

London's Metropolitan Police force has said it will "carefully consider the contents" of an ethics panel's report before deciding on any continued use of Live Facial Recognition (LFR) technology in public places. The controversial technology was trialled across London for several years, and the London Policing Ethics Panel -- a group commissioned by the London Mayor's office, independent of the police -- issued its report on those trials on Wednesday. The Ethics Panel's conclusions, based on consultations with members of the public, were that most people don't have a big problem with their faces being scanned in public places and cross-checked against lists of suspected criminals -- but there are caveats. According to the report, "57% of respondents thought that in general terms, police use of LFR was acceptable. We will see, however, that the purposes for which it is used makes a significant difference to people's support for its deployment."