UK - Limiting Facial Recognition?

The UK’s equality regulator has criticized the Metropolitan Police’s use of live facial recognition technology (LFR), saying the way it is being deployed is breaching human rights law.

The Met says it has made more than 1,000 arrests since January 2024 using LFR and is confident it uses it in a lawful way.

But the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) says the tech should only be used in a necessary and proportionate way, and is arguing “the Metropolitan Police’s current policy falls short of this standard.”

The EHRC said it recognized the potential benefits of the technology in policing but was concerned that the Met’s current policy breached key human rights protections and posed a threat to human rights.

These include the rights to privacy, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly, as set out in the European Convention on Human Rights.

Currently, there is no specific domestic legislation regulating police use of live facial recognition tech.

-www.bbc.com, 20 August 2025

Commentary: While the European Convention on Human Rights attempts to curtail the misuse of LFR, the technology is new; subsequently, “there is no specific domestic legislation.”

In Isaiah 3:9, we read: “The show of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.” This deals with shamelessness, and verse 11 adds: “Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.”

During the conflict between the Ephraimites and Gileadites, Judges 12:6 says: “Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.” That’s what we would call speech recognition.

When Peter denied the Lord, we read in Matthew 26:73b: “and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech bewrayeth thee.”

Now, with the assistance of artificial intelligence, there will be no hiding. In the end, what is written in Revelation 13:15 will be fulfilled: “And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.”