Latest news with #LibertyInvestigates
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Live facial recognition cameras may become ‘commonplace' as police use soars
Police believe live facial recognition cameras may become 'commonplace' in England and Wales, according to internal documents, with the number of faces scanned having doubled to nearly 5m in the last year. A joint investigation by the Guardian and Liberty Investigates highlights the speed at which the technology is becoming a staple of British policing. Major funding is being allocated and hardware bought, while the British state is also looking to enable police forces to more easily access the full spread of its image stores, including passport and immigration databases, for retrospective facial recognition searches. Live facial recognition involves the matching of faces caught on surveillance camera footage against a police watchlist in real time, in what campaigners liken to the continual finger printing of members of the public as they go about their daily lives. Retrospective facial recognition software is used by the police to match images on databases with those caught on CCTV and other systems. According to one funding document drawn up by South Wales police as part of a proposal to put the West End of London or Cardiff rail station under live facial recognition cameras and released by the Metropolitan police under the Freedom of Information Act, it is believed 'the use of this technology could become commonplace in our city centres and transport hubs around England and Wales'. The first fixed live facial recognition cameras will be fitted for a trial in Croydon, south London, later this summer. The expansion comes despite facial recognition failing to be referenced in any act of parliament. Campaigners claim the police have been allowed to 'self regulate' their use of the technology. Officers have in the past used a setting that was subsequently shown to disproportionately misidentify black people. After a court of appeal judgment in 2020, which found that South Wales police's use of live facial recognition cameras had been unlawful, the College of Policing provided guidance that 'the threshold needs to be set with care to maximise the probability of returning true alerts while keeping the false alert rate to an acceptable level'. There remains nothing in law to direct forces on the threshold or technology used. The policing minister, Diane Johnson, told parliament earlier this month that she recognised 'a need to consider whether a bespoke legislative framework governing the use of live facial recognition technology for law enforcement purposes is needed' but the Home Office is yet to provide details. Facial recognition cameras were first trialled in London and south Wales from 2016 but the speed at which police forces are rolling out the technology has accelerated over the last 12 months. The investigation by the Guardian and Liberty found: Police forces scanned nearly 4.7m faces with live facial recognition cameras last year – more than twice as many as in 2023. Live facial recognition vans were deployed at least 256 times in 2024, according to official deployment records, up from 63 the year before. A roving unit of 10 live facial recognition vans that can be sent anywhere in the country will be made available within days – increasing national capacity. Eight police forces have deployed the technology. The Met has four vans. Police forces have considered fixed infrastructure creating a 'zone of safety' by covering the West End of London with a network of live facial recognition cameras. Met officials said this remained a possibility. Forces almost doubled the number of retrospective facial recognition searches made last year using the police national database (PND) from 138,720 in 2023 to 252,798. The PND contains custody mug shots, millions of which have been found to be stored unlawfully of people who have never been charged with or convicted of an offence. More than 1,000 facial recognition searches using the UK passport database were carried out in the last two years, and officers are increasingly searching for matches on the Home Office immigration database, with requests up last year, to 110. Officials have concluded that using the passport database for facial recognition is 'not high risk' and 'is not controversial', according to internal documents. The Home Office is now working with the police to establish a new national facial recognition system, known as strategic facial matcher. The platform will be capable of searching a range of databases including custody images and immigration records. Lindsey Chiswick, the director of intelligence at the Met and the National Police Chiefs' Council lead on facial recognition, said surveys showed that four in five Londoners were in support of the police using innovative technology, including facial recognition cameras. This week, a registered sex offender, David Cheneler, 73, from Lewisham, was jailed for two years after he was caught alone with a six-year-old girl by a live facial recognition camera. He had previously served nine years for 21 offences against children. The Met arrested 587 people in 2024 with the assistance of the live facial recognition cameras of which 424 were charged with offences. Of those arrested, 58 were registered sex offenders in serious breach of their conditions and 38 have been charged. Chiswick said: 'Where there's limited amounts of money and there's fewer officers, but there's more demand, and we see criminals exploiting technology to a really grand scale … we've got to do something different. 'There's an opportunity out there. So policing needs to start operating a little bit differently. People talk about harnessing AI like it's some crazy horse we want to saddle but we do need to harness the opportunities that technology and data can bring us.' Chiswick said the Met's policy was to take 'really quite small steps and review them at every stage' but that there would be a 'benefit in potentially some sort of framework or statutory guidance'. The Met is deploying its facial recognition cameras at a setting that testing suggests avoids any statistical significance in terms of gender or ethnicity bias when it comes to cases of misidentification. Chiswick said: 'I don't want to use a biased algorithm in London. There's no point on all counts. I think for government, there's a question, isn't there around artificial intelligence? And I think clearly the public sector is going to use, and want to use AI more and more. 'I think the questions around who then decides where algorithms are purchased from, what training data is used, what countries might this technology come from and then, when you use it, are you obliged to test it and if you're obliged to test it, are you then obliged to operate at a certain setting? That's not really questions for law enforcement.' A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner's Office said: 'Police use of facial recognition technology can help keep our communities safe – but its use must be fair and proportionate. We are working with police forces to ensure that the technology is effective, and people's rights are protected. Our conversations with the Home Office on the use of the passport database are ongoing and form part of this work.' The Home Office declined a request for comment.
Business Mayor
25-05-2025
- Business Mayor
Valuable tool or cause for alarm? Facial ID quietly becoming part of police's arsenal
T he future is coming at Croydon fast. It might not look like Britain's cutting edge but North End, a pedestrianised high street lined with the usual mix of pawn shops, fast-food outlets and branded clothing stores, is expected to be one of two roads to host the UK's first fixed facial recognition cameras. Digital photographs of passersby will be silently taken and processed to extract the measurements of facial features, known as biometric data. They will be immediately compared by artificial intelligence to images on a watchlist. Matches will trigger alerts. Alerts can lead to arrests. According to the south London borough's most recent violence reduction strategy, North End and nearby streets are its 'primary crime hotspot'. But these are not, by any measure, among the capital's most dangerous roads. Its crime rate only ranks as 20th worst out of the 32 London boroughs, excluding the City of London. The plan to install the fixed cameras later this summer for a trial period is not an emergency initiative. North End and nearby London Road could be anywhere. Asked about the surveillance, most shopkeepers and shoppers approached on North End said they had not heard of the police plans, let alone the technology behind it. To some, the cameras will be just another bit of street furniture to go alongside the signs announcing 24-hour CCTV and urging safe cycling. That, some say, should be cause for alarm. Others point to surveys that suggest the public, fed up with a rise in crime, is broadly on side. Police forces started to trial facial recognition cameras in England and Wales from 2016. But documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FoI) and police data analysed by Liberty Investigates and shared with the Guardian, provide evidence of a major escalation in their use in the last 12 months. No longer a specialist tool, it is quietly becoming an everyday part of the police arsenal. Police forces scanned nearly 4.7m faces with live facial recognition cameras last year – more than twice as many as in 2023. Live facial recognition vans were deployed at least 256 times in 2024, up from 63 the year before. Forces are imminently expected to launch a roving unit of 10 live facial recognition vans that can be sent anywhere in the country. Meanwhile civil servants are working with the police to establish a new national facial recognition system, known as strategic facial matcher. The platform will be capable of searching a range of databases including custody images and immigration records. 'The use of this technology could become commonplace in our city centres and transport hubs around England and Wales,' according to one funding document drafted by South Wales police submitted to the Home Office and released by the Metropolitan police under FoI. Campaigners liken the technology to randomly stopping members of the public going about their daily lives to check their fingerprints. They envision a dystopian future in which the country's vast CCTV network is updated with live facial recognition cameras. Advocates of the technology say they recognise the dangers but point to the outcomes. Read More No-fault divorce: 'blame game' still rife, say family lawyers This week David Cheneler, a 73-year-old registered sex offender from Lewisham, in south London, who had previously served nine years for 21 offences, was sentenced to two years in prison for breaching his probation conditions. A live facial recognition camera on a police van had alerted officers to the fact that he was walking alone with a six-year-old child. 'He was on [the watchlist] because he had conditions to abide by', said Lindsey Chiswick, the director of intelligence at the Met and the National Police Chiefs' Council lead on facial recognition. 'One of the conditions was don't hang out with under 14-year-olds. 'He had formed a relationship with the mother over the course of a year, began picking the daughter up at school and goodness knows what would have happened if he hadn't been stopped that day, he also had a knife in his belt. That's an example of the police really [being] unlikely to remember the face and pick the guy up otherwise.' It will be powerful testimony for many – but critics worry about the unintended consequences as forces seize the technology at a time when parliament is yet to legislate about the rules of its use. Madeleine Stone from the NGO Big Brother Watch, which attends the deployment of the mobile cameras, said they had witnessed the Met misidentify children in school uniforms who were subjected to 'lengthy, humiliating and aggressive police stops' in which they were required to evidence their identity and provide fingerprints. In two such cases, the children were young black boys and both children were scared and distressed, she said. Read More Open justice: 'Wide-ranging' initiatives this year skip past newsletter promotion Get the day's headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion 'And the way it works is that the higher the threshold the less effective it is at catching people.' Stone added. 'Police will not always necessarily want to use it at those settings. There's nothing in law that requires them to use it at those settings. The idea that the police are being able to write their own rules about how they use it is really concerning.' A judicial review has been launched by Shaun Thompson from London, with the support of Big Brother Watch, into the Met's use of the cameras after he was wrongly identified by the technology as a person of interest and held for 30 minutes as he was returning home from a volunteering shift with Street Fathers, an anti-knife group. There is also the risk of a 'chilling' effect on society, said Dr Daragh Murray, who was commissioned by the Met in 2019 to carry out an independent study into their trials. There had been insufficient thinking about how the use of these cameras will change behaviour, he said. 'The equivalent is having a police officer follow you around, document your movements, who you meet, where you go, how often, for how long,' he said. 'Most people, I think, would be uncomfortable if this was a physical reality. The other point, of course, is that democracy depends on dissent and contestation to evolve. If surveillance restricts that, it risks entrenching the status quo and limiting our future possibilities.' Live facial recognition cameras have been used to arrest people for traffic offences, cultivation of cannabis and failure to comply with a community order. Is this proportionate? Fraser Sampson, who was the biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner for England and Wales, until the position was abolished in October 2023, is now a non-executive director at Facewatch, the UK's leading facial recognition retail security company which provides systems to companies to keep shoplifters out of their shops. He can see the value in the technology. But he is concerned that regulation and methods of independent oversight have not caught up with the pace at which it is advancing and being used by the state. Sampson said: 'There is quite a lot of information and places you can go to get some kind of clarity on the technology, but actually, when, where, how it can be used by whom, for what purpose over what period of time, how you challenge it, how you complain about it, what will happen in the event that it didn't perform as expected? All those kind of things still aren't addressed.' Chiswick said she understood the concerns and could see the benefit of statutory guidance. The Met was taking 'really quite small steps' which were being reviewed at every stage, she said. With limited resources, police had to adapt and 'harness' the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence. They were well aware of the potential 'chilling effect' on society and its ability to change behaviour, and cameras were not deployed at protests, she added. 'Is it going to become commonplace? I don't know', Chiswick said. 'I think we just need to be a bit careful about when we say [that]. I can think of lots of potential. Like the West End? Yeah, I can see that being, you know, instead of doing this static trial we're doing in Croydon, we could have done it in the West End. And I can see a different use case for that. It doesn't mean we're going to do it.' She added: 'I think we're going to see an increase in the use of technology, data and AI increasing over the coming years, and on a personal level, I think it should, because that's how we're going to become better at our jobs. But we just need to do it carefully.'
The Guardian
24-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Live facial recognition cameras may become ‘commonplace' as police use soars
Police believe live facial recognition cameras may become 'commonplace' in England and Wales, according to internal documents, with the number of faces scanned having doubled to nearly 5m in the last year. A joint investigation by the Guardian and Liberty Investigates highlights the speed at which the technology is becoming a staple of British policing. Major funding is being allocated and hardware bought, while the British state is also looking to enable police forces to more easily access the full spread of its image stores, including passport and immigration databases, for retrospective facial recognition searches. Live facial recognition involves the matching of faces caught on surveillance camera footage against a police watchlist in real time, in what campaigners liken to the continual finger printing of members of the public as they go about their daily lives. Retrospective facial recognition software is used by the police to match images on databases with those caught on CCTV and other systems. According to one funding document drawn up by South Wales police as part of a proposal to put the West End of London or Cardiff rail station under live facial recognition cameras and released by the Metropolitan police under the Freedom of Information Act, it is believed 'the use of this technology could become commonplace in our city centres and transport hubs around England and Wales'. The first fixed live facial recognition cameras will be fitted for a trial in Croydon, south London, later this summer. The expansion comes despite facial recognition failing to be referenced in any act of parliament. Campaigners claim the police have been allowed to 'self regulate' their use of the technology. Officers have in the past used a setting that was subsequently shown to disproportionately misidentify black people. After a court of appeal judgment in 2020, which found that South Wales police's use of live facial recognition cameras had been unlawful, the College of Policing provided guidance that 'the threshold needs to be set with care to maximise the probability of returning true alerts while keeping the false alert rate to an acceptable level'. There remains nothing in law to direct forces on the threshold or technology used. The policing minister, Diane Johnson, told parliament earlier this month that she recognised 'a need to consider whether a bespoke legislative framework governing the use of live facial recognition technology for law enforcement purposes is needed' but the Home Office is yet to provide details. Facial recognition cameras were first trialled in London and south Wales from 2016 but the speed at which police forces are rolling out the technology has accelerated over the last 12 months. The investigation by the Guardian and Liberty found: Police forces scanned nearly 4.7m faces with live facial recognition cameras last year – more than twice as many as in 2023. Live facial recognition vans were deployed at least 256 times in 2024, according to official deployment records, up from 63 the year before. A roving unit of 10 live facial recognition vans that can be sent anywhere in the country will be made available within days – increasing national capacity. Eight police forces have deployed the technology. The Met has four vans. Police forces have considered fixed infrastructure creating a 'zone of safety' by covering the West End of London with a network of live facial recognition cameras. Met officials said this remained a possibility. Forces almost doubled the number of retrospective facial recognition searches made last year using the police national database (PND) from 138,720 in 2023 to 252,798. The PND contains custody mug shots, millions of which have been found to be stored unlawfully of people who have never been charged with or convicted of an offence. More than 1,000 facial recognition searches using the UK passport database were carried out in the last two years, and officers are increasingly searching for matches on the Home Office immigration database, with requests up last year, to 110. Officials have concluded that using the passport database for facial recognition is 'not high risk' and 'is not controversial', according to internal documents. The Home Office is now working with the police to establish a new national facial recognition system, known as strategic facial matcher. The platform will be capable of searching a range of databases including custody images and immigration records. Lindsey Chiswick, the director of intelligence at the Met and the National Police Chiefs' Council lead on facial recognition, said surveys showed that four in five Londoners were in support of the police using innovative technology, including facial recognition cameras. This week, a registered sex offender, David Cheneler, 73, from Lewisham, was jailed for two years after he was caught alone with a six-year-old girl by a live facial recognition camera. He had previously served nine years for 21 offences against children. Sign up to Headlines UK Get the day's headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion The Met arrested 587 people in 2024 with the assistance of the live facial recognition cameras of which 424 were charged with offences. Of those arrested, 58 were registered sex offenders in serious breach of their conditions and 38 have been charged. Chiswick said: 'Where there's limited amounts of money and there's fewer officers, but there's more demand, and we see criminals exploiting technology to a really grand scale … We've got to do something different. 'There's an opportunity out there. So policing needs to start operating a little bit differently. People talk about harnessing AI like it's some crazy horse we want to saddle but we do need to harness the opportunities that technology and data can bring us.' Chiswick said the Met's policy was to take 'really quite small steps and review them at every stage' but that there would be a 'benefit in potentially some sort of framework or statutory guidance'. The Met is deploying its facial recognition cameras at a setting that testing suggests avoids any statistical significance in terms of gender or ethnicity bias when it comes to cases of misidentification. Chiswick said: 'I don't want to use a biased algorithm in London. There's no point on all counts. I think for government, there's a question, isn't there around artificial intelligence? And I think clearly the public sector is going to use, and want to use AI more and more. 'I think the questions around who then decides where algorithms are purchased from, what training data is used, what countries might this technology come from and then, when you use it, are you obliged to test it and if you're obliged to test it, are you then obliged to operate at a certain setting? That's not really questions for law enforcement.' The Home Office declined a request for comment.
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Lobbying led UK universities to adopt US-style security during Gaza protests, emails reveal
University leaders reassured campus security officials amid pro-Palestine protests in the UK that they would back them if 'things got tough' after their US counterparts were disciplined for their approach, according to internal emails. Reports subsequently emerged of students on British campuses facing disciplinary measures and tough bail conditions after police were called on largely non-violent demonstrations, raising claims of a heavy-handed strategy. Evidence of a successful lobbying campaign by campus security officials emerged in an email written last August by Oliver Curran, the chair of the Association of University Chief Security Officers (Aucso), a professional body with members at more than 140 UK universities. In the note to Aucso members, obtained by Liberty Investigates and shared with the Guardian, Curran wrote that he had met Universities UK, the body that represents vice-chancellors, after visiting a security conference in New Orleans. He wrote: 'I was extremely interested when I attended the [US campus law enforcement] conference on how they were handling the encampments and what lessons they had learnt. 'Despite carrying out the instructions of their seniors, when things got tough the [campus police] chiefs weren't supported, and in some cases were suspended/disciplined. 'One of the first things I did when I returned to the UK was to approach [university vice-chancellors] and asked that they continually provide the UK Aucso members with the support we require. The responses were extremely reassuring.' A Universities UK spokesperson said: 'We do not recognise that description of our meeting with Aucso. Aucso were invited to a meeting of all UK vice-chancellors to share their insights on handling protests and encampments because of their expertise in this area.' Curran added that campus security officials planned to do joint workshops with their US counterparts to help prepare for an anticipated second wave of protests at the start of the current academic year. In a LinkedIn post after the conference, he said he looked forward to implementing the Americans' 'innovative strategies' at home. Up to 113 students and staff in the UK have faced disciplinary investigations linked to pro-Palestine protest activity across at least 28 universities since the 7 October attacks, according to additional freedom of information requests by Liberty Investigates and Sky News. At least nine universities received briefings on protests from private intelligence and security companies including Horus Security Ltd, Mitie Intelligence Hub and the risk specialist Global Situational Awareness. Among those who faced disciplinary action after the handling of student protests on campuses across the US was the police chief at Arizona State University, where an encampment was removed and officers made more than 70 arrests. Gina Romero, the UN special rapporteur for freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, said it was deeply disturbing to learn that the increasingly hostile environment faced by pro-Palestinian protesters at universities was connected to 'lobbying efforts' behind the scenes. She said: 'It is as if, overnight, many universities had become an absolutely hostile space for dissent and free expression, for the exercise of rights, and for learning.' Kevin Blowe, a campaigns coordinator at the Network for Police Monitoring, a UK-based campaign group, said he was dismayed by the attempt to learn from the US. 'Nobody needs to look to the US for examples of best practices – because there aren't any,' he said. The emails uncovered by the investigation further reveal how Aucso set up a 'protest and assembly special interest group' in early May, as encampments sprang up across the UK. In an initial meeting, the 80-plus attenders were advised to 'choose wording and phrasing carefully' when recording information about student protests as 'it may be subject to [FoI] requests'. Coventry University disclosed a follow-up email from Horus Security Ltd after the special interest group meeting, offering to provide it with daily updates on 'the developing situation at those universities experiencing encampments with information … on the numbers and groups involved'. An Aucso spokesperson said it had no influence on the use of private intelligence firms by its members. They said: 'Universities see regular protests across different issues and students have the right to protest peacefully on issues that are important to them, whilst having full confidence that they are safe. 'Security teams need to be on hand but take a 'softly-softly' approach and work closely with all parties to ensure protests are safe and peaceful. The safety and security of our communities is of paramount importance to our members. 'Our main message to universities is to be aware and conscious of what is happening and keep a watchful eye, engage with your security teams and ensure fluid and regular comms and engagement with all key parties.' A Universities UK spokesperson said: 'Universities work hard to balance their duty to protect and promote free speech, and to allow legitimate protest, with the obligation to ensure the safety of their campuses and the ability of staff and students to go about their work and study. In any case, they are also obliged by law to prevent hate speech and racism.'
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Investigation shows Welsh universities sharing information with police
Universities in Wales have been sharing information with police about protests, talks, and prayer vigils on campus, including sharing images and videos of protesters, an investigation has found. Staff from Cardiff University contacted police to confirm the names of any staff or students who had been arrested saying the university wanted to "support [any] bail conditions," and "consider any potential implications for [visa] sponsorship" for a foreign member of staff. The information, obtained via an investigation by Sky News and Liberty Investigates, details of which have been shared with WalesOnline, show what one union claims is a "worsening crackdown on free speech". Reporters submitted a series of FOI requests to all UK universities, including eight in Wales, showing police and universities sharing information about protests, talks, and prayer vigils on campus and including sharing images and videos of protesters and fliers advertising events. Ten students and staff at Cardiff University have been subjected to disciplinary investigations in connection with activism. The investigations into seven students and three staff is one of the highest numbers in the UK, the Liberty and Sky News investigation says. Since the freedom of information request totalling 10, two more students are also understood to have been investigated. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here. The investigation found Cardiff University asked officers for details of staff and students who had been arrested at off-campus protests. Staff then sent police an Instagram post that it believed showed individuals breaching their bail conditions, asking if information was "hopefully useful" and then whether police intended to take "further action" if the post showed students in breach of bail conditions imposed after their arrest at an off-campus protest last June. The police officer responded: "Thanks for this, I'll do a comparison to some custody mugshots." Cardiff vice-chancellor Wendy Larner told staff last October the university was 'developing a new procedure relating to the right for peaceful and lawful process [sic],' according to internal documents seen by reporters. The university, in its response, denied there was any crackdown on free speech. "We reject the allegation that there is a 'worsening crackdown' on free speech and students' right to lawful protest. We respect our students' right to lawful and peaceful protest whilst remaining conscious of the need to minimise the impact and disruption to others. We are committed to engaging in open and constructive dialogue with our students, and their student representatives, on a variety of issues including Gaza." Asked if sharing the Instagram post with police was appropriate, as it could have led to the re-arrest of its students, the response from the university was: "The post was a public post made on a public-facing Instagram account. We do occasionally share publicly-available information with the police, and other authorities, to help protect the safety of everyone in our university community. Bail conditions are a matter for an individual to consider and observe." It also said it was "finalising guidance" about protests "so that legal and peaceful protest can continue to be supported at the university and provides clarity on behaviours which are unacceptable". The investigation found: In February campus security shared with officers details of two planned protests posted about on student Instagram accounts In April, a few weeks after Israel's killing of Iran's military commander Mohammed Reza Zahedi, officers asked for the number of Iranian students at Cardiff to assess the number '[they] may need to support/be vulnerable or [if] conflict escalates' In May, after students set up a protest encampment, staff were apparently anxious about how to respond to pro-Palestinian activism On May 9 one Cardiff staff member emailed another, saying: 'Lots of issues coming up of non-students/staff speakers turning up and talking in ways which are not within university policies and causing a range of problems" Staff also sought officers' advice on the use of the contested phrases: "From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free" and the word "intifada". Critics say the former phrase calls for the destruction of Israel while proponents say it is simply a call for Palestinians to have equal rights. The word intifada, meaning to 'shake off' in Arabic, has been used to describe two sustained periods of Palestinian uprisings in the late 1980s and early 2000s. The investigation also discovered police and security kept tabs on individual protesters via Instagram, noting that a main organiser posted in May that he was "heading to Egypt". Nizar 'Neezo' Dahan, a prominent non-student campaigner from Swansea who at the time was distributing aid to displaced Gazans in Cairo, believes this refers to him. The following month, on June 3, he was arrested at an off-campus demonstration in Cardiff prompting a group of protesters – including students – to rally at Cardiff Bay Police Station for his release. Eighteen people, including Neezo, have since been charged in connection with the protests for a range of alleged offences including public order and obstructing the highway. Email disclosures show how on June 5, two days after the protest, Cardiff University asked the police to confirm the identities of any students among the arrestees as they wished to "support [any] bail conditions" as well as a foreign staff member so that they could "consider any potential implications for [visa] sponsorship". Officers did so and provided bail conditions. One of those was to not associate with co-accused and "not to be in a group numbering more than five persons in any public place". Three weeks later university staff then emailed the force with suspicions students were breaching their bail conditions, which could lead to them being rearrested. The University of South Wales received an email from officers containing a photo of two canvassers, asking: "Are you familiar with them or could assist with information/intelligence that could lead us to identifying them?" However it is not clear how the university replied based on the heavily redacted email exchanges The University of South Wales disclosed two email exchanges while Cardiff released 144 pages of correspondence, offering a glimpse into what the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) has described as a 'cosy' relationship between police and campus security at several institutes. On January 28 South Wales Police emailed four Welsh universities seeking to "improve channels of intelligence-sharing', saying it had already 'set up a channel of dialogue [...] at the University of South Wales, which is proving successful in sharing information and tackling threat, risk, and harm on the university campus". It is, however, unclear how the universities included in the email – Cardiff, Cardiff Met, Swansea, and Trinity St David – replied as none have disclosed their responses to the police's proposition. Bangor University admitted to holding two meetings with officers – one in May and another in August – to discuss pro-Palestine protest activity on its campus but gave no details about what was discussed. Aberystwyth, Cardiff Met, Trinity St David, and Wrexham – said they held no emails with police. Two – Swansea and Bangor – refused to provide some or all of the requested information citing law enforcement concerns. The University College Union (UCU) said: "Universities should stand up for free speech and academic freedom yet instead we are now seeing evidence of a worsening crackdown on free speech as universities discipline staff and students for peacefully protesting against genocide. Rather than trying to clamp down on legitimate protest Universities UK, the AUCSO, and university vice-chancellors should be working with staff and students and ensuring institutions divest from weapons manufacturers and others profiteering off the misery Israel is inflicting upon Gaza." A statement from South Wales Police said: "South Wales Police supports the right for people to make their voices heard through protest providing it is done lawfully. Decisions about how to police protests requires consideration of complex and often competing rights and issues. "We strive to strike a balance in our policing approach and take measures to ensure that the rights of all parties are respected and upheld. However we will act against anyone who breaks the law whether this is at the time of the offence or retrospectively. South Wales Police is open to dialogue and collaboration with advocacy groups to address any concerns about the policing of protest activity and ensure that policing practices reflect the values of fairness, equality, and justice."
