Abstract
Abstract Automated facial recognition (AFR) has emerged as one of the most controversial policing innovations of recent years. Drawing on empirical data collected during the United Kingdom’s two major police trials of AFR deployments—and building on insights from the sociology of policing, surveillance studies and science and technology studies—this article advances several arguments. Tracing a lineage from early sociologies of policing that accented the importance of police discretion and suspicion formation, the analysis illuminates how technological capability is conditioned by police discretion, but police discretion itself is also contingent on affordances brought by the operational and technical environment. These, in turn, frame and ‘legitimate’ subjects of a reinvented and digitally mediated ‘bureaucratic suspicion’.
Highlights
Automated facial recognition (AFR) surveillance has emerged as a controversial technology among the growing armoury of digital policing tools
This paper focuses on technology that monitors the public as they traverse observed areas and compares their faces to a database of known suspects
Facial recognition technologies provide the capability for police to identify suspects they probably would not be otherwise able to
Summary
Automated facial recognition (AFR) surveillance has emerged as a controversial technology among the growing armoury of digital policing tools. Notwithstanding academic commentary on the wider topic (inter alia Introna and Wood 2004; Gates 2011), police operational uses of AFR technology have yet to be studied empirically This article addresses this gap whilst aspiring to avoid the risk of technological determinism facing the study of surveillance technology (Lyon 2001) by accenting the role of human interpretation and intervention.. Three intersecting literatures are considered important for understanding the socio-technical practices surrounding AFR use: sociological studies of police suspicion and discretion; analyses of surveillance and society and insights from science and technology studies. Operation Fulcrum Anthony Joshua Boxing Autumn Rugby Internationals (four dates) Kasabian concert Liam Gallagher concert Operation Fulcrum Operation Malacite Royal visit Six Nations Rugby (three dates)
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