Thread by @rowlsmanthorpe

NEW (and I promise this really happened)

The head of the Metropolitan Police Federation said China’s facial recognition technology is “absolutely correct” and “spot on”

And called for facial recognition to be deployed in London “on a 24-hour basis”
news.sky.com/story/facial-r…

Ken Marsh called the finding that the Met’s facial recognition is 81% inaccurate “absurd”, saying, “We’d throw it in the bin if it that’s bad”
news.sky.com/story/facial-r…

This was in response to the first independent report into the Met's facial recognition programme, which found that four out of five people flagged by the system were identified incorrectly

https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/1146478975146967040?s=19

Ken Marsh said facial recognition was "fantastic" because it could catch terrorists

The idea of people being stopped incorrectly, he said, wasn't a big issue: "If you’ve done nothing wrong, I personally wouldn’t have any problem with it whatsoever" news.sky.com/story/facial-r…

When I spoke to Mr Marsh, he said he didn't condone what China did with facial recognition, only the tech itself. He also said I was quoting him out of context

This was all in an interview with BBC Essex - so decide for yourself! From 2h 11min bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0…

The MP who's leading on this is @DavidDavisMP. This was what he said in response to those comments

You shouldn't believe Chinese accuracy figures, because they don't report the ones they get wrong. You should believe... your own independent academic evaluation 👇