Met defends facial recognition plan for Notting Hill Carnival
On Sunday, 11 organisations penned a letter to Sir Mark, where they described LFR as "a mass surveillance tool that treats all Carnival-goers as potential suspects and has no place at one of London's biggest cultural celebrations".They said the decision to reintroduce the technology at Carnival was "deeply disappointing" and argued it could be "less accurate for women and people of colour".
'Learning from experience'
Sir Mark said the force had designed an extensive and complex policing operation to keep carnival-goers, expected to be more than one million in number, safe.He wrote: "We acknowledge that when LFR was previously deployed at Notting Hill Carnival in 2016 and 2017, it did not build public confidence."At that time, the technology was in its early stages and the algorithm's performance was limited. The legal and oversight position was also very different."He said that since, the technology had made "considerable progress", and had an improved algorithm that performed at a higher standard."We have also refined our operational approach - including not using LFR within the Carnival footprint," he added."These developments reflect our commitment to learning from experience and improving how we support public safety while maintaining trust."
The groups concerned about the technology included Liberty, Big Brother Watch and the Runnymede Trust. They highlighted an ongoing judicial review brought by Shaun Thompson, a black Londoner who says he was wrongly identified by the system and detained.Their letter stated: "Notting Hill Carnival is an event that specifically celebrates the British African Caribbean community, yet the [Metropolitan Police] is choosing to use a technology with a well-documented history of inaccurate outcomes and racial bias."
Sir Mark said the force had selected an LFR algorithm with care, which "does not perform in a way which exhibits bias".He added that safeguards were in place to ensure the force used the technology in a non-discriminatory way.
Referencing the number of arrests last year, Sir Mark said that a small minority of Carnival attendees "have used the event to commit serious crimes"."Our use of LFR is part of a much broader strategy to locate, disrupt and deter the minority who pose such risks," he said.
He concluded: "Where we know that LFR can help locate individuals the police need to speak to, and those people pose a public safety risk to the many seeking to enjoy Carnival, it is entirely reasonable to ask - why wouldn't we use it in this context?"
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A survey published in April by public broadcaster NHK found more than 30% of people aged between 18 and 24 in the city and surrounding prefecture who had not heard the accounts of the city's atomic bomb survivors said that they did not wish to do so. That was more than 6 points higher than a similar survey five years ago and higher than a 25% figure for the rest of Japan. The most common reason given was that the accounts were too horrific. Both Japan and South Korea have committed not to develop or acquire nuclear weapons by signing the NPT. But security experts describe Japan as a threshold nuclear-weapons state – meaning it has the technical capacity, and could obtain the materials, to build and launch a bomb if it was determined to do so. Within a couple of years, Tokyo could build a nuclear device small enough to fit on a missile, said Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank. One senior lawmaker close to Ishiba told Reuters that Japan could build a nuclear weapon in as little as six months, and that it should consider doing so if trust in the U.S. nuclear umbrella broke down. Japan has advanced nuclear know-how with a long-established fleet of civilian reactors, a sophisticated defense industry and technology from its space program, including solid-fuel rockets. This would allow it to build ballistic missiles to deliver a nuclear payload, experts say. As a by-product of its nuclear fuel consumption, the government says Japan has about 45 tonnes of plutonium – the fissionable material needed to make a bomb. Japan also has the capacity to enrich uranium, another path to produce weapons-grade nuclear material. South Korea has also developed and deployed a number of weapons that analysts say could deliver nuclear bombs – including a submarine designed to launch conventional ballistic missiles, and increasingly powerful missiles that could reach North Korea or China. But South Korea is not as close to the threshold as Japan because it lacks the capacity to reprocess fuel to extract plutonium or enrich uranium, despite operating 26 reactors to generate power. Seoul aborted a clandestine weapons program in the 1970s under pressure from Washington and ratified the NPT in 1975. Experts predict it would take several years for Seoul to build a nuclear weapon, even if it overcame these hurdles. 'Even if we announce a state of emergency and throw all national resources behind it, the steelmaking, the facility building and making fissile materials and so on, it's not easy. I'd say four to five years,' said Cheon Myeong-guk, a researcher at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology. Beyond the technical hurdles, other factors inhibit U.S. partners from developing their own nuclear weapons. If Japan began to build a bomb in breach of its NPT commitments, it could face sanctions by the United Nations and lose access to the imported nuclear fuel it needs to feed its nuclear power industry. The densely populated archipelago also lacks an area suitable for nuclear testing. Despite Trump's earlier apparent openness to Japan and South Korea acquiring nukes, it remains unclear if his administration would ultimately agree. The State Department said Trump and Vice President JD Vance 'have spoken frequently about their opposition to the spread of nuclear weapons.' Beijing would be highly unlikely to remain passive if it learned that either Seoul or Tokyo were taking this path. A nuclear armed U.S. ally in East Asia could end up precipitating the conflict that acquiring nuclear weapons was intended to avoid, according to Alexandra Bell, a former Biden administration official who was directly involved in nuclear deterrence talks with Tokyo and Seoul. 'Having doubts about the U.S. commitment to extended deterrence and actually pursuing proliferation are two very different things,' Bell said. 'The latter action would certainly provoke a response from the Chinese.' Any move to acquire nuclear weapons might prompt China to further build up its nuclear stockpile or increase the likelihood of conflict if Beijing perceived such actions as being a prelude to war, she said. China's foreign ministry accused Japan and South Korea of 'promoting so-called 'extended deterrence' to justify military expansion and military provocation.' Japan in particular, it told Reuters, claims to 'advocate for a 'nuclear-free world,' while in reality relying on the U.S. 'nuclear umbrella' to cooperate with the deployment of U.S. strategic forces. These practices are hypocritical and self-contradictory.' Japan's evolving attitudes to the bomb have dismayed some survivors of the 1945 attacks. Atomic bomb survivor Kunihiko Sakuma, 80, said he cannot understand that today a growing number of Japanese people are coming around to the view that nuclear weapons can offer protection, given the horrors he and others in Hiroshima experienced. He was an infant when the bomb fell, curled up on a futon on the floor of his family home as his mother sorted the laundry. There was a flash and then suddenly everything went dark, his mother later recounted to him. She described how she had whisked him up and carried him on her back to a nearby shelter through a radioactive shower of soot and ash known as 'black rain.' 'Just because we're under the U.S. nuclear umbrella doesn't mean we're safe,' he said. 'If nuclear weapons are used, it's over, isn't it. Real security only exists when there's mutual trust between nations.' By David Lague Alongside a massive build-up in conventional military firepower, China has embarked on a rapid and sustained increase in the size and capability of its nuclear forces, according to the U.S. military and arms control experts. The commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, General Anthony Cotton, told Congress in March that the directive from Chinese leader Xi Jinping that China's military be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027 was driving a build-up of nuclear weapons that could be launched from land, air and sea. In its 2023 national defense policy, China renewed its longstanding pledge that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons under any circumstances. The so-called 'no first use' policy also includes a promise that China will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear armed state. In response to questions, the defense ministry in Beijing said 'a nuclear war cannot be won and must not be waged.' China, it said, adhered to a 'nuclear strategy of self-defense and pursues a no-first-use policy.' In its annual report on Chinese military power, the Pentagon said despite China's public stance, its strategy probably includes a possible first use in response to conventional attacks that threaten the viability of its nuclear forces, command and control or that approximates the effect of a nuclear strike. Beijing would also probably consider nuclear first use if a conventional military defeat in Taiwan 'gravely threatened' the Communist regime's survival, the Pentagon said in the report published late last year. China's defense ministry said it opposed 'any attempt to hype up the so-called 'Chinese nuclear threat' in an effort to smear and defame China and deliberately mislead the international community.' China is expanding and modernizing its weapons stockpile faster than any other nuclear-armed power and has accumulated about 600 warheads, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a Chicago-based non-profit. It said China is building about 350 new missile silos and several new bases for road mobile launchers. It estimated that China's military, the People's Liberation Army, had about 712 launchers for land-based missiles but not all were assigned for nuclear weapons. Of those launchers, 462 can be loaded with missiles 'that can reach the continental United States,' it said. Many of the PLA's launchers are for shorter range missiles intended to attack regional targets but most of those were not assigned for a nuclear strike, the Bulletin's assessment said. In its report, the Pentagon estimated that the PLA would have more than 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030, as it seeks to build a bigger force ranging from low-yield precision strike missiles to intercontinental ballistic missiles with multi-megaton explosive impact.
