Three arrested after facial recognition van use

Three people were arrested on the day a police force used live facial recognition (LFR) vans in a town for the first time, figures show.

Thames Valley Police (TVP) used LFR in Slough's High Street on Friday and stats published on the force's website show cameras monitored 15,045 faces between about 11:00 and 14:00 GMT.

The technology, which has been criticised by some civil liberty groups, compares a digital image of a human face against a database of suspects.

TVP used the vans in Oxford for the first time in December and in Oxford again, Milton Keynes, High Wycombe and Reading in January.

Its figures show that the technology has been used to scan the faces of 101,585 people over recent months and that six people have been arrested after their images were matched on TVP's database.

TVP said last year that said it believed LFR was a "highly effective and valuable tool" that helped it protect communities.

It said everyone on its watchlist must be based on the "principles of necessity and proportionality" and that LFR's use must be "balanced with public confidence of our use of [it]".