Police Scotland weigh up ‘Orwellian’ facial recognition technology

Police are considering plans to introduce facial recognition technology in Scotland “where there is a significant threat to public safety”.

Live facial recognition uses cameras attached to the top of police vans to scan the faces of people as they walk past, immediately assessing them against a wanted list and alerting officers if there is a match. It has been so successful in London that it has been hailed by the Metropolitan Police as the biggest breakthrough for crime detection since DNA.

In April Lindsey Chiswick, the Met’s director of ­intelligence, said that the tool had been a “game-changer”, triggering an arrest every two hours of alleged criminals including rapists, burglars and robbers since it was introduced the year before.

However, privacy campaigners and some