Shaun Thompson was just trying to get home after a long day’s work. The 39-year-old community worker had been out with Street Fathers, a group that works with young people in Croydon to steer them away from knife crime. But as he walked past London Bridge Tube station, something unexpected happened and it left him shaken.
“I was stopped by police who told me I was a wanted man,” Shaun told BBC. “When I asked what I was wanted for, they said, ‘That’s what we’re here to find out.’”
It turned out the Metropolitan Police’s live facial recognition (LFR) system had wrongly identified him as a suspect. What followed was a 30-minute ordeal where officers asked for his fingerprints, which he refused, and only let him go after he showed a photo of his passport.
For Shaun, the experience wasn’t just confusing. It was frightening. “Every time I come past London Bridge, I think about that moment. Every single time,” he said. “It was aggressive. Intimidating. It felt like stop and search but on steroids.”
Now, Shaun is taking the Met Police to the High Court. His case, backed by privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, is expected to be heard in January. It's being called the first legal challenge of its kind against what critics are calling an “intrusive technology.”
The police, on the other hand, argue that LFR is helping them catch dangerous criminals. They recently announced plans to double its use, saying it has been successful in removing offenders from the streets. LFR works by scanning people’s faces in public spaces and comparing them to images in police databases.
But Shaun believes the risks of misidentification are far too great, especially for young people. “This is like living in Minority Report,” he said, referring to the sci-fi film where people are arrested for crimes they haven’t yet committed. “This is not the life I know. I want structural change.”
He worries that if facial recognition can fail someone like him,a community worker, it could do far worse to others. “I can only imagine the kind of damage it could do to someone younger, more vulnerable, who doesn’t know their rights.”
Shaun hopes his legal challenge will force a serious conversation about how far technology should go in policing public spaces and at what cost to ordinary people.
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