Experts have warned of a'frightening expansion' of'Orwellian' technology as the government expands the use of live facial recognition across the country. Ten vans equipped with facial recognition cameras will be deployed across seven police forces – Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley and Hampshire. The Home Office maintains that this technology will only be used to catch'high–harm' offenders with rules to ensure'safeguards and oversight'. According to the government, the technology has already been used to make 580 arrests in London over the last year, including 52 registered sex offenders. However, rights groups have raised concerns that the unprecedented rollout of this surveillance technology risks becoming overly intrusive.

Police believe live facial recognition cameras may become "commonplace" in England and Wales, according to internal documents, with the number of faces scanned having doubled to nearly 5m in the last year. A joint investigation by the Guardian and Liberty Investigates highlights the speed at which the technology is becoming a staple of British policing. Major funding is being allocated and hardware bought, while the British state is also looking to enable police forces to more easily access the full spread of its image stores, including passport and immigration databases, for retrospective facial recognition searches. Live facial recognition involves the matching of faces caught on surveillance camera footage against a police watchlist in real time, in what campaigners liken to the continual finger printing of members of the public as they go about their daily lives. Retrospective facial recognition software is used by the police to match images on databases with those caught on CCTV and other systems.

South Wales Police have revealed plans to deploy live facial recognition cameras in Cardiff during this year's Six Nations rugby internationals. The cameras will be placed at'key points' across the city centre, and will alert officers to anyone who is on a predetermined watchlist. The force claims that the cameras will help to'keep visitors safe'. 'The expansion of facial recognition cameras around the city centre really enhances our ability to keep visitors safe from harm,' said Trudi Meyrick, Assistant Chief Constable. 'Our priority is to keep the public safe and this technology helps us achieve that.'

Civil liberties campaigners have said that a proposal made by Keir Starmer on Thursday to expand the use of live facial recognition technology would amount to the effective introduction of a national ID card system based on people's faces. Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, said it was ironic the new prime minister was suggesting a greater use of facial matching on the same day that an EU-wide law largely banning real-time surveillance technology came into force. "Expanding live facial recognition means millions of innocent Britons being subjected to automated ID checks," said Carlo. "These are the surveillance tactics of China and Russia and Starmer seems ignorant of the civil liberties implications." Live facial recognition has, until now, largely been used in the UK by the Metropolitan police and South Wales police, as a real-time aid to help officers to detect and prevent crime, including at public events such as last year's coronation.

In his classic novel, 1984, George Orwell imagined how Britain might one day become a totalitarian surveillance state. Yet as Orwell's novel celebrates its 75th anniversary this month, British police are already deploying technologies that would put Big Brother to shame. From the facial recognition cameras watching you shop to the algorithms predicting crimes before they happen, these tools feel as if they've been ripped from the pages of science fiction. But there is nothing fictional about the AI cops already patrolling Britain's streets - and experts say there is only more to come. Jake Hufurt, head of research and investigations at Big Brother Watch, warned MailOnline: 'We're sleepwalking into a high-tech police state.'

A Beyoncé gig, the coronation of King Charles, and the British Formula One Grand Prix all have one thing in common: Thousands of people at the events, which all took place earlier this year, had their faces scanned by police-operated face recognition tech. Backed by the Conservative government, police forces across England and Wales are being told to rapidly expand their use of the highly controversial technology, which globally has led to false arrests, misidentifications, and lives derailed. Police have been told to double their use of face searches against databases by early next year--45 million passport photos could be opened up to searches--and police are increasingly working with stores to try to identify shoplifters. Simultaneously, more regional police forces are testing real-time systems in public places. The rapid expansion of face recognition comes at a time when trust in policing levels are at record lows, following a series of high-profile scandals.

Police will use live facial recognition technology in Cardiff during the Beyoncé concert on Wednesday, despite concerns about racial bias and human rights. The technology will be used in Cardiff city centre, but not at the stadium, to "support" the artist's concert at the Principality stadium by identifying wanted individuals and ensuring safeguarding, South Wales police said, as the artist kicks off the UK leg of her first solo headline tour in seven years. A spokesperson for the force said the technology would be used in the city centre, not at the concert itself. In the past, police use of live facial recognition (LFR) in England and Wales had been limited to special operations such as football matches or the coronation, when there was a crackdown on protesters. Daragh Murray, a senior lecturer of law at Queen Mary University in London, said the normalisation of invasive surveillance capability at events such as a concert was concerning, and was taking place without any real public debate.

Use of live facial recognition (LFR) by UK police forces "fail[s] to meet the minimum ethical and legal standards," according to a study from the University of Cambridge. After analyzing LFR use by the Metropolitan (Met) and South Wales police, researchers concluded that the technology should be banned for use in "all public spaces." LFR pairs faces captured by security cameras to database photos to find matches. China and other non-democratic regimes have used the technology to as part of their state surveillance tools. UK police have been testing its use in multiple situations to fight crime and terrorism.

Police should be banned from using live facial recognition technology in all public spaces because they are breaking ethical standards and human rights laws, a study has concluded. LFR involves linking cameras to databases containing photos of people. Images from the cameras can then be checked against those photos to see if they match. British police have experimented with the technology, believing it can help combat crime and terrorism. But in some cases, courts have found against the way police have used LFR, and how they have dealt with infringements of the privacy rights of people walking in the streets where the technology has been used.

Amazon will extend a ban it enacted last year on the use of its facial recognition for law enforcement purposes. The web giant's Rekognition service is one of the most powerful facial recognition tools available. Last year, Amazon signed a one-year moratorium that banned its use by police departments following a string of cases where facial recognition services – from various providers – were found to be inaccurate and/or misused by law enforcement. Amazon has now extended its ban indefinitely. Facial recognition services have already led to wrongful arrests that disproportionally impacted marginalised communities.