Court of Appeal (Civil Division) v. South Wales Police

Decided by

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)

Parties

R (on the application of Edward BRIDGES) v. THE CHIEF CONSTABLE OF SOUTH WALES POLICE

Decision date

August 11, 2020

Remedy

The Court of Appeal issued declarations stating that South Wales Police's use of live automated facial recognition was not in accordance with law under Article 8(2) ECHR, failed to comply with section 64 Data Protection Impact Assessment requirements, and breached the Public Sector Equality Duty under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010.

Appeal

Appeal status not stated

Key holdings

1. The police force's deployment of live automated facial recognition was not in accordance with law under Article 8(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights due to excessive discretion regarding watchlist selection and deployment locations.

   “was not in accordance with the law for the purposes of Article 8(2).” — paragraph 210

2. South Wales Police's Data Protection Impact Assessment failed to comply with section 64 of the Data Protection Act 2018 because it failed to properly assess risks resulting from legal deficiencies under Article 8 ECHR.

   “its Data Protection Impact Assessment did not comply with section 64(3) (b) and (c) of the Data Protection Act 2018 .” — paragraph 210

3. South Wales Police failed to discharge the Public Sector Equality Duty because it did not take all reasonable steps to ascertain whether the facial recognition software had an impermissible racial or gender bias.

   “The Respondent did not comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty in section 149 of the Equality Act 2010” — paragraph 210

In plain English

Edward Bridges, a civil liberties campaigner supported by Liberty, brought a judicial review claim against the Chief Constable of South Wales Police challenging the police force's trial and deployment of live automated facial recognition technology known as AFR Locate. South Wales Police deployed AFR Locate on around 50 occasions between May 2017 and April 2019 at large public events, capturing and processing biometric data from approximately 500,000 faces to compare against watchlists. The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal on three key grounds. First, the court held that the use of AFR Locate violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights because the legal framework left too much discretion to individual police officers regarding who could be placed on a watchlist and where the technology could be deployed. Second, because of these legal deficiencies, the force's Data Protection Impact Assessment failed to satisfy section 64 of the Data Protection Act 2018. Third, the police failed to comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 because they did not take all reasonable steps to verify whether the software possessed racial or gender bias. The court granted formal declarations establishing these statutory and human rights breaches.