🔗 Share this article UK Police Forces Campaign to Employ Discriminatory Face Scanning Systems Law enforcement agencies across the United Kingdom effectively campaigned to deploy a facial recognition system acknowledged as biased against women, young people, and individuals from ethnic minority groups, following complaints that a more accurate version produced fewer potential suspects. How the System Works British police use the national police database to conduct retrospective facial recognition searches. This procedure involves comparing a “probe image” of a suspect against a repository of more than 19 million mugshots to find potential matches. Acknowledged Discrimination The Home Office admitted last week that the technology was biased. This admission came after a study by the government's National Physical Laboratory found it misidentified people of Black and Asian heritage and females at much greater frequency than white men. The Home Office said it “took steps on the findings”. “This raises the question of whether this technology only becomes effective if users tolerate discrimination in race and sex. Operational ease is a weak argument for overriding fundamental rights.” Long-Standing Problem Official papers show that this bias has been recognized for over twelve months. Furthermore, police forces lobbied to reverse an initial decision that was designed to address the problem. Senior officers were informed of the algorithmic discrimination in late 2024. The government-ordered laboratory study found the system was more likely to suggest incorrect matches for photos of women, Black people, and those under 40 years old. A Reversed Decision In response, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) mandated that the confidence threshold required for possible hits be raised to a point where the bias was significantly reduced. However, this decision was reversed the following month following complaints from police that the adjusted system was producing fewer “useful lines of inquiry”. NPCC documents indicate the higher threshold cut the number of searches resulting in possible identifications from over half to a mere under 15%. Profound Inequalities Although the authorities declined to specify what threshold is now in operation, the latest NPL study discovered the system could produce false positives for Black women almost 100 times more frequently than for white women at specific configurations. The ministry commented on these findings: “The testing found that in a limited set of circumstances the software is more likely to wrongly flag some population segments in its search results.” Balancing Utility and Fairness Outlining the effect of the brief increase to the system's confidence threshold, the police records note: “This adjustment greatly lessens the effect of bias across protected characteristics of ethnicity, age and gender but had a substantially detrimental effect on operational effectiveness”. The documents further note that police units complained that “a previously useful tool returned outcomes of limited benefit”. Wider Implementation Proposals Meanwhile, the UK administration has launched a two-and-a-half-month public review on its proposals to widen the use of biometric scanning systems. Policing minister Sarah Jones has described the tool as the “biggest breakthrough since genetic fingerprinting”. Criticism from Advisors and Monitors Abimbola Johnson, head of the advisory panel for the national policing equality strategy, commented: “There was very little discussion in equality strategy sessions of the technology deployment despite obvious cross-over with the plan’s concerns. “These revelations show once again that the pledges to combat discrimination policing has undertaken through the equality initiative are not being translated into wider practice. Our reports have warned that new technologies are being rolled out in a landscape where racial disparities, weak scrutiny and poor data collection already persist. “Any use of this technology must meet strict national standards, be subject to external review, and prove it diminishes rather than exacerbates ethnic bias.” Home Office Response A government representative said: “The Home Office treat the findings of the report with utmost gravity and we have implemented changes. A new algorithm has been independently tested and acquired, which has no statistically significant bias. It will be tested early next year and will be undergo evaluation. “The foremost aim is ensuring public safety. This gamechanging technology will support officers to apprehend and prosecute offenders. There is human involvement in each stage of the process and no further action would be pursued without trained officers meticulously examining the output.”