🔗 Share this article British Law Enforcement Agencies Lobbied to Employ Biased Face Scanning Technology Police forces across the UK successfully lobbied to deploy a facial recognition system known to be biased against females, youths, and members of minority ethnic backgrounds, after complaining that a less biased version produced a reduced number of investigative leads. The Technology in Practice UK forces use the police national database (PND) to carry out retrospective facial recognition searches. This procedure involves comparing a “probe image” of a person of interest against a repository of more than 19 million custody photos to find potential matches. Admitted Bias The Home Office admitted last week that the technology was biased. This acknowledgment followed a review by the government's National Physical Laboratory found it misidentified Black and Asian people and women at much greater frequency than Caucasian males. The Home Office said it “had acted on the findings”. “It prompts the issue of whether facial recognition only becomes useful if users accept biases in race and gender. Convenience is a weak argument for overriding fundamental rights.” Known Issue Internal documents reveal that this bias has been recognized for over twelve months. Furthermore, police forces lobbied to reverse an initial decision that was designed to mitigate the problem. Police bosses were notified of the algorithmic discrimination in late 2024. The government-ordered NPL review found the system was had a higher probability to suggest false positives for images depicting women, Black people, and those under 40 years old. A Reversed Decision In response, the national police leadership body ordered that the confidence threshold required for possible hits be raised to a level where the bias was greatly diminished. However, this directive was reversed the next month following complaints from police that the modified technology was generating fewer “useful lines of inquiry”. Internal records indicate the higher threshold reduced the number of queries that yielded possible identifications from over half to a just 14%. Severe Disparities Although the Home Office and NPCC declined to specify what setting is currently used, the recent independent review found the system could generate incorrect matches for Black women almost 100 times more frequently than for white women at certain settings. The Home Office commented on these results: “The testing identified that in a limited set of circumstances the algorithm is more likely to incorrectly include some population segments in its search results.” Operational Effectiveness vs. Bias Describing the impact of the brief increase to the system's accuracy setting, the police records note: “This adjustment significantly reduces the impact of bias across legally safeguarded attributes of race, generation and gender but had a significant negative impact on police efficiency”. The papers further note that police units argued that “a previously useful tool returned outcomes of questionable value”. Wider Implementation Proposals Meanwhile, the UK administration has opened a two-and-a-half-month consultation on its plans to expand the use of biometric scanning systems. The minister for police the relevant minister has described the tool as the “most significant advance since DNA matching”. Expert and Oversight Concerns Abimbola Johnson, head of the independent scrutiny and oversight board for the police race action plan, said: “We observed scant consideration through equality strategy sessions of the facial recognition rollout despite obvious cross-over with the plan’s concerns. “These revelations demonstrate yet again that the anti-racism commitments the police has undertaken through the race action plan are failing to be integrated into broader operations. Independent assessments have warned that new technologies are being rolled out in a landscape where ethnic inequalities, inadequate oversight and faulty information gathering continue to exist. “All deployment of this technology must meet strict national standards, be subject to external review, and prove it reduces rather than exacerbates ethnic bias.” Official Statement A Home Office spokesperson said: “The Home Office treat the conclusions of the report with utmost gravity and we have implemented changes. A new algorithm has been externally evaluated and procured, which has no statistically significant bias. It will be trialled in the coming months and will be subject to further assessment. “Our priority is ensuring public safety. This revolutionary tool will assist police to put criminals and rapists behind bars. There is human involvement in every step of the procedure and no arrest or charge would be taken without trained officers carefully reviewing the output.”