Peaceful Protests

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Paddick (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords that I am now a non-affiliated Member of this House and that I served for 30 years as a police officer specialising in public order policing. I also declare an interest as a paid non-executive adviser to the Metropolitan Police Service, and I am grateful to the Met for providing me with a briefing, and to Big Brother Watch, as I have managed to acquire its briefing.

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for the opportunity to debate the practical toolkit for law enforcement officials to promote and protect human rights in the context of peaceful protests, although I fear that this debate may be a little premature, as components one and three of the toolkit are yet to be published. However, we have component two, “A principle-based guidance for the human-rights compliant use of digital technologies in the context of peaceful protests”.

Looking at this document from a practical UK policing perspective, I found it somewhat confusing—and I am looking at this from a physical assembly or demonstration perspective, rather than an online one, which is included in the UN document. As Big Brother Watch points out, and as the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, just said, the guidance states that biometric surveillance should not be used

“before, during or after protests”

and

“facial recognition technologies … must not be utilised to identify or track individuals peacefully participating in a protest”.

Big Brother Watch goes on to say that:

“The use of this technology at protests represents a significant threat to the rights of freedom of expression and association, as the chilling effect will mean members of the public are less willing to engage their right to protest, as they fear loss of anonymity and reprisals both now and in the future”.


If, and only if, facial recognition is deployed to capture the images of peaceful protestors and identify them, would the fear of loss of anonymity be a reasonable one—and if, and only if, those protestors were to engage in unlawful activity, would there be a reasonable fear of reprisals, at least here in the United Kingdom? The fact is that live facial recognition as deployed by police forces in the United Kingdom does not capture and retain images but simply compares those images with a limited and specific database of individuals, which changes depending on the deployment.

For example, my understanding is that the images of those convicted of stalking-type offences in relation to members of the Royal Family may be used at events such as the Coronation, but away from sites of lawful protest. Biometric facial images are captured and compared with the event-specific database images, and if there is no match, the image is immediately and irreversibly deleted. At events such as the Coronation, where assembly was lawful, and mindful of the potential chilling effect, the Metropolitan Police confirmed in a public statement that facial recognition

“is not used to identify people who are linked to, or have been convicted of, being involved in protest activity”.

It was used to protect peaceful gatherings, not where people had peacefully gathered, by identifying individuals who present a danger in crowds, such as registered sex offenders.

If live facial recognition was used against some universal database, as are, I believe, commercially available to law enforcement organisations outside the UK—a global compilation of millions of images taken from open sources, such as Facebook and Instagram, whereby the police could identify most people at a peaceful protest—the concerns of Big Brother Watch and the UN special rapporteur would have some justification. My understanding is that this is prohibited in the United Kingdom.

Big Brother Watch says:

“Despite international warnings that the use of facial recognition in the context of protest poses a grave threat to human rights, police forces in the UK are already using the technology to monitor and identify protestors”.


However, my understanding is that police forces are not using live facial recognition technology to monitor and identify peaceful protesters but to monitor and identify those who may present a threat to peaceful protest. The example that Big Brother Watch gave of its use at Silverstone, for example, was in connection with an unlawful protest, where the lives of both the protestors and those trying to prevent them could have been put at risk; it was not deployed at a peaceful assembly.

I agree with Big Brother Watch in its assertion that there is insufficient primary legislation specifically overseeing the use of facial recognition, meaning that the police can, to some extent, write their own rules about how it is deployed. However, they are bound by data protection law and the Human Rights Act, which restrict their activities to what is necessary and proportionate to achieve their lawful objectives. In the case of peaceful protest, that is to ensure that the protest remains peaceful. Being able to identify, isolate and restrict the activities of known troublemakers is surely preferable to placing unnecessary and disproportionate restrictions on the activities of the peaceful majority. Properly deployed, controlled and audited, the use of live facial recognition can enable, rather than have a chilling effect on, the right to free assembly and protest. I for one would be more likely to engage in a protest if I believed that the police were taking necessary and proportionate action to identify, isolate and prevent the attendance of those known to be intent on criminal activity.

Big Brother Watch quite rightly questions who is on the databases that the police use, and against which live facial recognition compares captured images. There is a legitimate need for the police to be audited in some way to ensure that their actions are lawful, necessary and proportionate. Arguably, primary or secondary legislation is needed to ensure that the police are deploying live facial recognition in a human-rights compliant way.

However, in my opinion—based on 30 years as a police officer, 10 years as a Liberal Democrat Peer, with eight years as their Front Bench spokesperson on home affairs, and now being back in the paid employ of the Met—live facial recognition in the vicinity of protests, assemblies and elsewhere has the potential to make policing even more proportionate, better targeted and less interventionist. As with so much technology, it is not, as it seems to be portrayed by some, bad in itself—but it has the potential, without proper regulation, to be used in a non-human-rights compliant way. While that is contrary to what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, suggested, perhaps the way in which the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis has recently resisted calls from politicians to ban peaceful protests might give her some hope for the future.