Britain's most senior police officer has called for the public and businesses to install more CCTV cameras at lower heights so they can record facial images that can be used in a national database.Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, told LBC radio that people should ideally have one raised camera to record the indent and another lower positioned camera to gather facial data.Face recognition software could compare pictures from CCTV cameras and identify a burglar simply from a mugshot.”Taking [pictures of] the tops of their heads is not that helpful for facial recognition which relies on the eyes and the configuration of the area around the nose and the mouth,” he told the Daily Telegraph columnist Beverley Turner on LBC radio.Speaking to the Mail Online, the Green Party's Baroness Jones condemned the strategy. “It threatens to undermine people's confidence and inject fear in the place where they should feel most secure,” she said.Howe's comments came a day after a British parliamentary committee tasked with looking into the implications of biometric technology has recommended that the government strengthen regulation on the tech, particularly facial recognition.Labour MP Andrew Miller said in the report: 'We were alarmed to discover that the police have begun uploading custody photographs of people to the police national database and using facial recognition software without any regulatory oversight. Some of the people had not even been charged.”
UK police chief calls for public to boost facial database
