In Posa v Hungary [2020] ECHR 522, the European Court of Human Rights awarded €7,000 to a person whose complaint of police assault could not be properly investigated due to destruction of the incident footage after thirty days.
Let’s face it: use of automated facial recognition technology by the police
The case of R (Bridges) v Chief Constable of South Wales Police & Information Commissioner [2020] EWCA Civ 1058 (handed down on 11 August 2020) was an appeal from what is said to have been the first claim brought before a court anywhere on planet earth concerning the use by police of automated facial recognition (“AFR”) technology. There could be nothing wrong with posting scores of police officers with eidetic memories to look out for up to a 800 wanted persons at public gatherings. So why not use a powerful computer, capable of matching 50 faces a second with a database of (under) 800 suspects, to do this job much more cheaply and instantaneously, flagging any matches to a human operator for final assessment? According to the Court of Appeal in Bridges, this system constitutes an interference with Article 8 rights which is not such as is in accordance with the law, but which (critically) would be proportionate if a sufficiently narrow local policy were framed.
The system in use in South Wales will require a more rigorous local policy to be put in place which reduces the breadth of discretion available to individual officers as to who and (connectedly) where may be targeted for the use of AFR, as well as sufficient impact assessments, pursuant to the Equality Act 2010 and DPA 2018, and a sufficient DPA 2018 policy statement.
Emergency Powers and the Civil Contingencies Act 2004
We are all under attack from the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (“the Coronavirus”). This time, our foe is not a country, a terrorist group or a person. Nor is it a predator. Chillingly, it is not even alive. The Government has exceptionally wide powers under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 in this present emergency which could include forcible quarantine and assessment, the confiscation or requisition of property and compelling citizens to assist in policing.
Inadequate investigation into complaint of rape a breach of article 3, £16,500 damages
The Northern Ireland High Court in C (A Person under a Disability) v Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland [2020] NIQB 3 has awarded damages of £16,500 for a breach of article 3 in respect of a failure by the police to conduct a proper investigation into the reported rape of a twenty-year-old woman with Asperger’s syndrome.
Let’s face it: use of automated facial recognition technology by the police
The case of R (Bridges) v Chief Constable of South Wales Police & Information Commissioner [2019] EWHC 2341 (Admin); [2020] 1 WLR 672 is said to have been the first claim brought before a court anywhere on planet earth concerning the use by police of automated facial recognition (“AFR”) technology. There could be nothing wrong with posting scores of police officers with eidetic memories to look out for up to a 800 wanted persons at public gatherings. So why not use a powerful computer, capable of matching 50 faces a second with a database of (under) 800 suspects, to do this job much more cheaply and instantaneously, flagging any matches to a human operator for final assessment? According to the Divisional Court in Bridges, this may, depending on the facts of each particular deployment, be lawful.