In a landmark decision on 11 August, the Court of Appeal ruled that an ongoing pilot of facial recognition technology was unlawful.

The pilot scheme, carried out by the South Wales Police Force (SWP), involved the use of an Automated Facial Recognition system called AFR Locate, which is designed to match the faces of members of the public with those held on a ‘watchlist’ of potential suspects. Where a match was not made with the watchlist, the images were automatically deleted.