🔗 Share this article British Police Forces Campaign to Employ Biased Facial Recognition Technology Law enforcement agencies across the UK successfully lobbied to use a face scanning system acknowledged as biased against females, young people, and members of ethnic minority groups, after complaining that a more accurate version generated a reduced number of potential suspects. How the System Works UK forces use the police national database (PND) to conduct searches using historical face recognition. This process entails comparing a reference photograph of a person of interest against a database of more than 19 million custody photos to identify potential matches. Acknowledged Discrimination The UK interior ministry admitted last week that the technology was flawed. This acknowledgment followed a review by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) determined it misidentified Black and Asian people and females at much greater frequency than white men. The ministry said it “had acted on the findings”. “It prompts the question of whether this technology only becomes useful if users accept biases in race and gender. Convenience is a poor argument for disregarding basic freedoms.” Known Issue Internal documents reveal that this bias has been known about for more than a year. Furthermore, police forces argued to overturn an initial decision that was designed to mitigate the problem. Senior officers were informed of the system's bias in late 2024. The Home Office-commissioned NPL review concluded the system was more likely to produce false positives for photos of females, individuals of Black ethnicity, and those aged 40 and under. A Reversed Decision In response, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) ordered that the confidence threshold required for possible hits be raised to a point where the bias was significantly reduced. However, this decision was overturned the following month after forces complained that the modified technology was producing a lower number of “investigative leads”. Internal records show the higher threshold reduced the number of queries resulting in potential matches from 56% to a mere 14%. Severe Disparities Although the authorities declined to specify what threshold is now in operation, the recent independent review found the system could generate false positives for Black women nearly a hundred times more frequently than for Caucasian women at specific configurations. The ministry stated on these findings: “The testing found that in a limited set of circumstances the software is more likely to incorrectly include some population segments in its match reports.” Operational Effectiveness vs. Bias Outlining the effect of the brief increase to the system's confidence threshold, the police records note: “This adjustment significantly reduces the effect of bias across legally safeguarded attributes of ethnicity, age and gender but had a substantially detrimental effect on police efficiency”. The documents add that police units argued that “a once effective tactic now delivered results of limited benefit”. Wider Implementation Proposals Meanwhile, the government has launched a ten-week public review on its proposals to widen the use of facial recognition technology. The minister for police the relevant minister has described the technology as the “most significant advance since genetic fingerprinting”. Expert and Oversight Concerns The chair of a police oversight board, chair of the advisory panel for the police race action plan, commented: “We observed scant discussion through race action plan meetings of the technology deployment even with obvious cross-over with the plan’s concerns. “These revelations show yet again that the anti-racism commitments policing has undertaken through the equality initiative are failing to be integrated into broader operations. Independent assessments have cautioned that new technologies are being implemented in a context where ethnic inequalities, inadequate oversight and faulty information gathering continue to exist. “All deployment of facial recognition must adhere to rigorous official guidelines, be independently scrutinised, and demonstrate it diminishes rather than exacerbates racial disparity.” Official Statement A Home Office spokesperson stated: “We takes the conclusions of the report seriously and we have implemented changes. A new algorithm has been independently tested and procured, which has demonstrated no measurable discrimination. It will be trialled early next year and will be undergo evaluation. “Our priority is ensuring public safety. This revolutionary tool will assist police to apprehend and prosecute offenders. There is officer review in every step of the procedure and no further action would be pursued without specialist personnel carefully reviewing the output.”