A leading researcher into the use of facial recognition technology has said that the details of over seven million people are already on police facial recognition databases.

Luke Roberts, an adviser to the Cambridge University Centre of Science and Policy, told GB News: “It seems that the government has already done small scale trials, and now they’re saying, can we take that national so it’s a scalability question.

“Live facial recognition means that you’ve got cameras monitoring in real-time faces and using algorithms to detect people who may be on a database.

“So if I can put it this way, think of it like a big fishing trawler that’s going to sweep up lots of data and it’s going to catch some sharks definitely within that but some whales probably will never get caught, and some really small stuff won’t happen as well.

“It is really from a policing perspective, it looks like a really simple solution to a very complex problem, because it reduces costs and allows them to target specific individuals that are already known.”

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He added: “I think the big danger is that we are going towards the point where the algorithm is how justice will be delivered.

“And I think there’s a big question about who has oversight and who has governance of that. At this particular moment in time, the danger is that the technology always leads the policy. What you end up with is the afterthought of, ‘how does this get regulated, where do the ethics stand’.

“And the big danger that I see is that with the amount of money the government wants to spend, which is something like 16 million on this, you’re going to get basically system lock in. Like, we’ve already spent the money now. We’ll figure out how to regulate it afterwards.”

Mr Roberts said: “I wouldn’t be so worried about the hacks. Like, yes, you’re always going to have those types of breaches. But I think the fact that something like seven million people have their faces on a police database somewhere already, which is quite a huge amount.

“Yes, I think that’s according to police records. So it means that you have to train these algorithms on something, and they’re training them on us.

“And so going back to your point, where is the governance and accountability? Because the technology is moving.”