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The pilot is part of a wider expansion of the surveillance technology in England and Wales. Photo by Nathy dog on Unsplash
A trial of controversial live facial recognition technology that scanned thousands of faces and cost tens of thousands of pounds produced no matches, The Detail can reveal.
Thousands of passengers travelling from Dublin to Holyhead were scanned in February as part of a UK immigration enforcement pilot. Over three days, passengers were checked against a watchlist of 6,535 suspected immigration offenders, with no matches.
The findings raise fresh questions about the effectiveness and proportionality of the technology as both the UK and Ireland move toward wider deployment.
Despite no passengers matching the watchlist, two people were arrested during the operation. The Home Office did not say how the arrests were linked to the facial recognition system.
The pilot forms part of a wider expansion of the powerful surveillance technology by police forces in England and Wales and follows a six-day trial in November.
Across all the trials since November, more than 10,000 faces were scanned against watchlists that grew from 1,942 to 6,535 individuals, resulting in just two alerts overall, and none in the most recent exercise.
The operation is a “proof-of-concept pilot” by the Home Office's immigration enforcement division, which plans to use the technology to locate people within their “Population of Interest.”
The Home Office did not answer a question on the cost of the most recent trial, but previously said the six-day pilot in November cost £50,000.
Holyhead was chosen after intelligence showed individuals were returning to the UK in breach of deportation orders and using the Common Travel Area to circumvent immigration controls.
A Home Office spokesman said they would not comment on operational matters, but that live facial recognition technology was an essential part of “safeguarding the integrity of the UK’s immigration system”.
The UK trial comes as Ireland faces its own debate over expanding facial recognition powers.
Olga Cronin, a senior policy officer at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), questioned the proportionality of the programme:
“How can it be necessary and proportionate to subject more than 10,000 individuals with no connection to wrongdoing to indiscriminate biometric facial data processing?"
"The European Data Protection Board has been very clear: processing a person’s biometric data, in any context, constitutes a serious interference with people’s privacy and data protection rights.”
She added that as the UK expands the technology, the “trajectory is stark” and “should serve as a warning to us here in Ireland.”
Attempts to grant Gardai such powers since 2022 have met opposition from TDs and civil liberties groups.
Last year, the government’s expert group on artificial intelligence warned that plans for facial recognition technology risk “gradual mission creep towards an untargeted mass surveillance state”.
An Garda Síochána will soon be granted powers to use live facial recognition, but the Government has promised it will only be used in emergency situations such as terrorism or missing persons cases.
The UK pilot goes much further and uses the technology to detect immigration offences.
Sinéad Gibney, the Social Democrats TD for Dublin Rathdown, has previously raised concerns in the Dail about the technology which she said was “deeply flawed, and prone to errors”.
She said there was an “increasing push for the public to accept that every aspect of their lives is subject to surveillance”.
Dr Elizabeth Farries, of University College Dublin’s Centre for Digital Policy, said the policing benefit appeared “minimal” and the results “demonstrates that facial recognition technology does not work reliably in real-world conditions”.
However, Dr Farries warned that “that the problem isn't accuracy, it's bias.”
A UK man is suing the police after being arrested for burglary in a city he’d never visited. Facial recognition had misidentified him with another person of south Asian heritage.
Separately, the Metropolitan Police are being taken to court by Shaun Thompson, a black community worker, who was wrongly identified as a criminal suspect.
Mr Thompson, who had to provide his ID, have his fingerprint scanned, and was inspected for scars and tattoos, described live facial recognition technology as 'stop and search on steroids'.