AI facial recognition divides opinion in Peterborough

TL;DR:

  • Cambridgeshire Police deployed live facial recognition in Peterborough for a second time, scanning faces against a watchlist of high-risk individuals.
  • Residents are split between those reassured by the safety case and those uneasy about surveillance and consent.
  • An earlier deployment scanned 34,000 faces in six hours, leading to two arrests.

Cambridgeshire Police’s renewed use of live facial recognition (LFR) in Peterborough city centre has exposed a familiar fault line in UK attitudes to AI policing — between people who welcome it as a safety tool and those who see it as a step toward a surveillance society. The vans scan passers-by in real time, matching faces against a watchlist of individuals deemed a risk to public safety.

The reactions captured locally cut both ways. Some residents took a “nothing to hide” view, arguing that only wrongdoers should worry and that a visible police presence felt reassuring. Others described discomfort at being watched by default — one former data analyst warned bluntly against trusting how the data is stored and processed, while another said notifying the public via social media and a QR code was “not good enough” for technology that records everyone who walks past.

The force sought to address those concerns. It said the vans were clearly signed, that images of people not on the watchlist are deleted immediately and cannot be recovered, and that mobile-deployment footage is removed within 31 days unless needed for an investigation. Inspector Sam Tucker said officers aimed to engage with both flagged individuals and curious members of the public. During the first Peterborough deployment on 19 May, police scanned 34,000 faces over six hours and arrested two men wanted for failing to appear in court.

Looking forward

LFR’s expansion across English forces continues to outpace any dedicated statutory framework governing it, leaving deployments to rest on force-level policy and data-protection law. The Peterborough vox pop is a small sample, but it mirrors a national tension Resultsense readers will recognise from debates over AI age-checks and automated decision-making: the public’s tolerance for AI surveillance hinges less on the technology’s accuracy than on whether people feel meaningfully informed and able to consent.

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