London’s Metropolitan Police demonstrate facial recognition tool amid growing concerns

Our Take

Credit to ABC News and correspondent Patrick Reevell for getting cameras inside the Met's facial recognition operation. Watching London police walk a reporter through a tool that scans every face in a crowd against a watchlist is unsettling, and it should be. The polished demo is meant to reassure the public, but the underlying logic — mass biometric scanning as routine policing — is exactly what critics have been warning about for years.

Here in the US, we don't call it facial recognition yet in most places, but the infrastructure is already being laid down through networks of automated license plate readers like Flock Safety's. Once a city has hundreds of always-on cameras logging every vehicle that passes, the leap to adding face and gait recognition isn't hypothetical — it's a procurement decision. London is showing Americans what the next phase looks like when nobody pushes back.

The Met's setup didn't appear overnight, and neither will similar systems here — they get built one contract, one grant, one quiet council vote at a time. If you want to see how far that build-out has already spread near you, check our camera map, and if you'd rather it stop spreading, our take-action page has the tools to push back before your city looks like this segment.