“it is also clear there are plenty among the public who are willing to put up with having their faces scanned - if it means safer streets.” Unfortunately it do

“it is also clear there are plenty among the public who are willing to put up with having their faces scanned - if it means safer streets.” Unfortunately it doesn’t mean anything of the sort. This tech doesn’t prevent typical street crime like muggings or assault. And the chance of getting hurt or killed by a police officer whose dispatcher just identified you as a criminal is much higher than what the random folks who skipped bail that are in this system would do to you (ie nothing). Then there’s the “low” false positive rates. They say only one of 33,000 people scanned is falsely identified. Okay, that’s pretty high. If they scan one percent of the UK population with these devices each day, that’d be 20 false positives a day, and 20 more potentially violent encounters with police a day. Compared to what’s likely a much smaller number of correct identifications of actual wanted individuals, most of whom could probably be found by much cheaper, less problematic methods.