The Metropolitan Police has confirmed its first permanent installation of live facial recognition (LFR) cameras is coming this summer and the lucky location will be the South London suburb of Croydon.

The two cameras will be installed in the city center in an effort to combat crime and will be attached to buildings and lamp posts on North End and London Road. According to the police they will only be turned on when officers are in the area and in a position to make an arrest if a criminal is spotted.

The installation follows a two-year trial in the area where police vans fitted with the camera have been patrolling the streets matching passersby to its database of suspects or criminals, leading to hundreds of arrests. The Met claims the system can alert them in seconds if a wanted wrong’un is spotted, and if the person gets the all-clear, the image of their face will be deleted.

“I am currently working with the central team to install fixed LFR cameras in Croydon town center,” Mitch Carr, the police force’s neighborhood policing superintendent, told local leaders, the Times reports.

“This will mean our use of LFR technology will be far more embedded as a ‘business as usual’ approach rather than relying on the availability of the LFR vans that are in high demand across London. The end result will see cameras covering a defined area and will give us much more flexibility around the days and times we can run the operations.”

According to the Met’s own figures [PDF] for LFR using van deployments in London, the error rate in identifying suspects is less than 1 percent and the police typically have around 16,000 suspects on their watchlist. Quite how well fixed cameras will do is less clear, since criminals will know where they are and either avoid those streets or cover their faces.

Privacy groups have spoken out against the scheme. Writing in London morning paper City AM, interim director at Big Brother Watch Rebecca Vincent said the deployment was the start of a slippery slope that could imperil everyone in the UK’s right to privacy.

“The move represents an alarming expansion of the surveillance state, and a further slide towards a dystopian nightmare that could quickly take hold across the UK. It also underscores the urgent need for legislative safeguards on LFR, which to date has not been addressed in any parliamentary legislation,” she said.

The move represents an alarming expansion of the surveillance state

“Police forces have been left to write their own policies on how they plan to use LFR, and can choose how and when to employ it. For its part, the Met’s ‘LFR watchlist’ expands beyond those suspected of criminal activity, including vulnerable persons and even victims of crimes.”

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The UK’s current Labour administration is very keen on the approach and in November launched a $20 million contest for companies looking to supply the police with LFR tech. However, its legality is in some doubt, with a House of Lords committee saying it was “deeply concerned” about the use of such unregulated technology. However, Croydon South’s Conservative MP said he was in favor of the new hardware.

Chris Philp, who is also the Shadow Home Secretary, opined: “Using fixed cameras is the logical next step in the rollout of this technology, which will ensure even more wanted criminals get caught.

“Over the past year the mobile vans have caught around 200 wanted criminals in Croydon including at least two rapists who would not otherwise have been caught. Those few people opposing this technology need to explain why they don’t want those wanted criminals to be arrested.” ®