Dutourdumonde - stock.adobe.com UK High Court dismisses facial-recognition judicial review case The Metropolitan Police has won a judicial review case that argued its live facial-recognition policy was unlawful The UK High Court has dismissed a judicial review case against the Metropolitan Police’s use of live facial-recognition (LFR) technology, ruling there are sufficient constraints in place to prevent abuse and ensure compliance with human rights law. Brought by anti-knife campaigner Shaun Thompson, who was wrongfully identified by the Met’s system and subject to a prolonged stop as a result; and Silkie Carlo, the director of privacy group Big Brother Watch, the landmark legal challenge argued there are no meaningful constraints on how the Met can deploy the technology. In particular, their challenge hinged on the argument that the Met’s policy on where it can be deployed and who it can be used to target is so permissive, and leaves so much discretion to the force, that it cannot be considered “in accordance with law”. However, the High Court ultimately agreed with the Met’s lawyers that “the Policy contains adequate and lawful constraints” over how and where the technology can be used. While the Court of Appeal ruled in August 2020 that the use of LFR by South Wales Police was unlawful because the policy in place left excessive discretion in the hands of the force, the High Court found that in the Met’s case, its policy contained clear deployment criteria that effectively prevents individual officers from acting on “whim, caprice, malice or predilection”. Although Thompson and Carlo argued that the Met’s policy could lead to disproportionate deployment rates in areas with large ethnic minority communities, the court said it “heard no developed or meaningful challenge on discrimination grounds” that would allow it to accept this argument. It added although a properly