Community worker Shaun Thompson and privacy campaigner Silkie Carlo, of Big Brother Watch, had been seeking to challenge the Metropolitan Police’s use of live facial recognition (LFR) under the European Convention on Human Rights, claiming the usage breached Articles 8, 10 and 11 of the ECHR. But their claim was rejected by the High Court, which ruled their human rights had not been breached by the technology’s usage, which was ““in accordance with the law”. The ruling comes after the Home Office recently ran a consultation on increasing use of facial recognition systems across the UK. Malcolm Dowden, a privacy expert with Pinsent Masons, said the decision would open the door to wider deployment of the tools by the authorities. “This case had been viewed as the first major challenge to deployment based on APP guidance on using facial recognition,” he said. “Its rejection is likely to fuel increased use of automated facial recognition, not only in policing but also - following the recent Home Office consultation - in areas such as border and immigration control.” Thompson had previously been misidentified by facial recognition systems in London, which had led to him being detained and questioned by police after it incorrectly identified him as his brother, who was on bail at the time. Lawyers argued that the use of the technology was a breach of privacy and pointed to a similar case involving South Wales Police in 2020 where the Court of Appeal had found the deployment of facial recognition systems had been unlawful, and was done so without adequate legal safeguards, leaving discretion to individual officers. Since that ruling in 2020 the College of Policing has issued authorised professional practice (APP) guidance on the deployment of live facial recognition technology which ensures that police forces address issues relating to