Report Summary
This report provides members of the Scottish Police Authority Policing Performance Committee with an overview of the work conducted as part of the Police Scotland, Scottish Police Authority and Scottish Biometrics Commissioner’s National Conversation on Live Facial Recognition.
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Meeting
The publication discussed was referenced in the meeting below
Policing Performance Committee - 10 June 2025
Date : 10 June 2025
Location : online
Background
Facial Recognition technology, including Live Facial Recognition (LFR), uses Artificial Intelligence to identify people in a digital image (such as a photo or video).
LFR uses this technology to assess live video footage of people who are passing a camera. It automatically compares the images of those in the crowd against a bank of lawfully held police images to identify a match against an approved ‘watchlist’ of people of interest. If a person passes the camera and they are not on the watchlist then the technology pixilates their face from the operator and deletes their image in a fraction of a second. Conversely, if the person is of interest, then the systems alert officers who would engage the person and make appropriate enquiries with them.
At the first Scottish Biometrics Conference in June 2024, the former Chair of the Authority, Martyn Evans, made a commitment to consider the use of LFR in a Scottish Policing context through a national conversation with the people of Scotland.
The early engagement between the Authority and Police Scotland on LFR is in compliance with the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two organisations. The MoU guides early and effective identification, and appropriate engagement between the Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland when it is considering a new and emerging strategy, policy or practice to improve the safety and wellbeing of persons, localities and communities in Scotland, and which are likely to be of significant public interest.
The National Conversation has been informed by the ‘Proportionality Principle’ as outlined in the Independent Advisory Group on New and Emerging Technologies in Policing Oversight, scrutiny and review workstream report. The ‘proportionality principle’ is based on what is legal, legitimate and democratic, whilst taking cognisance that many operational policing scenarios involve the need to carefully balance the rights of individuals to address threat, risk and harm.
As part of this early engagement, on 10 December 2024, the Policing Performance Committee received a paper on the initial work that had been undertaken as part of the Police Scotland (PS), the Authority, and Scottish Biometrics Commissioner (SBC) tripartite LFR tactical Short Life Working Group (SLWG). Work has since progressed from the proposed outline and is discussed in the Timeline section.
