Date

21 April 2026

Court

Administrative Court

Issue

Whether the Metropolitan Police’s policy on Live Facial Recognition (LFR) technology was lawful or gave them too much discretion over who it could be used against, where it could be deployed and why.

Short Answer

The LFR policy was lawful. It contained sufficient safeguards and limits on its use, which prevented arbitrary decision-making and complied with human rights legislation.

Facts

LFR scans faces in public spaces and compares them with a predetermined police watchlist. Biometric data is immediately deleted where no match is found. Where LFR flags a match, police officers decide on the next steps. 

The Met Police created an LFR policy detailing three situations where it could be used:

  1. Crime or missing-person hotspots.
  2. Protective security operations (e.g. major events).
  3. Where specific intelligence suggests someone on a watchlist is in a location.

The claimants were:

  • Shaun Thompson - mistakenly identified as his brother (who was on a police watchlist) by LFR used by the Met Police. He was stopped, detained and threatened with arrest when he refused to provide his fingerprints.
  • Silkie Carlo - director of civil liberties group Big Brother Watch. She believes LFR deters her presence at protests.

The claimants argued:

  1. The policy unlawfully interfered with the right to privacy (Article 8).
  2. The policy unlawfully restricted freedom of expression (Article 10) and freedom of assembly (Article 11).

They also argued the Met Police's policy allowed them to use LFR in large and crowded areas of London, which gave them too much discretion to decide where, why and against whom LFR could be used. 

Decision

The claim was dismissed. 

The Court focused only on whether the Met Police had acted lawfully and within the limits of their powers, rather than LFR's merits. 

Although the Court accepted that LFR can interfere with Articles 8, 10 and 11 of the ECHR, it considered the policy to contain restraints against arbitrary decision-making.

Analysis

This judgment differs from another leading facial recognition case, Bridges -v- South Wales Police [2020]. 

In Bridges, the Court of Appeal found the police’s legal framework was deficient. It contained insufficient safeguards, gave the police too much discretion, failed to comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty, and there wasn’t enough evidence gathered on the impact on privacy rights.

By contrast, and likely because it was written after the Bridges decision, the Met Police's policy clearly defines against whom, where and why LFR can be used. The Court therefore found that the police were appropriately constrained by their LFR policy, rather than relying solely on their own discretion.

Conclusion

Police use of LFR is controversial. Human rights campaigners are worried it is difficult for people in public spaces to opt out of being captured by LFR, and that algorithmic biases lead to more false positives for ethnic minorities (although the claimants in this case didn’t advance standalone legal arguments on the Public Sector Equality Duty). 

Nevertheless, since this judgment fell entirely in favour of the Met Police's policy, Thompson and Carlo is likely to encourage other police forces who are planning on using LFR to develop policies with clear criteria and safeguards. Future judicial decisions are likely to follow this judgment when assessing where, how and why this technology can be used.