Join ‘The End of Privacy in Public’ campaign to demand your MP take action against the rapid expansion of facial recognition technology (FRT) across the UK.
Step 1
Go to the UK Parliament website and type in your postcode to find you local MP's email address.
Step 2
Click here to send an email to your MP, and then paste your MP’s email address in the ‘to’ field. If you want to, you can also cc facialrec@privacyinternational.org so that we can track which MPs are being contacted (See the Disclaimer at the bottom of this page). Please also add your postal address in the email so that your MP can verify you are their constituent.
Or
Copy and paste the letter text below in to an email, and paste your MP’s email address in the ‘to’ field, and if you want to copy PI in, please put facialrec@privacyinternational.org into the ‘cc’ field. Please add "Please take against against the rapid expansion of facial recognition" as the email header:
Dear MP,
As your constituent, I’m writing to ask you to take action against the increasing use of dystopian facial recognition cameras being used in my local area and beyond.
I live at [PLEASE INSERT YOUR FULL ADDRESS SO THAT THE MP CAN CONFIRM THAT YOU ARE THEIR CONSTITUENT].
I am deeply concerned that UK police forces are deploying live FRT in public spaces including at protests, with limited notification, and without the consent of individuals whose facial data is being processed, in contravention of their privacy and wider rights.
Privacy International and Big Brother Watch have also uncovered a dramatic rise of police mass facial recognition searches against the passport and immigration databases. With searches of the passport database skyrocketing from 2 in 2020 to 417 in 2023 and searches of the immigration database increasing almost sevenfold over just a year from 16 searches in 2023 to 102 in 2024.
Did you know this was taking place?
The continued deployment of FRT by UK police on our streets is taking place within a democratic vacuum without any specific law in place pertaining to the use of FRT that would impose restrictions and safeguards for its use. Furthermore, the use of FRT has led to concerning instances of misidentification and in the US, individuals have even been wrongly jailed after facial recognition errors.
The Home Office and police forces are also conducting FRT searches against the passport and immigration databases, which contain over 150 million photos of the public, without a clear legal basis, and without informing the public or parliament.
I strongly urge you to write to the Home Office and demand an urgent moratorium on the use Facial Recognition, including the use of the passport and immigration databases for Facial Recognition searches.
Please can you reply to me and cc facialrec@privacyinternational.org into your response.
Thank you in advance for considering taking this important action on my behalf to protect our privacy. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
Click here to tell us you sent this!
**DISCLAIMER: **
We (obviously!) take your privacy seriously. By cc’ing us into your email to your MP, PI will collect some of your personal information such as your email address. We will only retain your email for the purposes of tracking responses to our campaign. We will delete your email(s) and any data within it, no later than six months after we receive your email(s). If your MP responds to you, cc’ing Privacy International, we may keep their response and any data within it if it is necessary for our work, and our work as part of an informal coalition of UK NGOs campaigning against the use of FRT. We will delete any unnecessary data within those responses no later than six months after we receive the email. Any data we receive from you or your MP will be treated in accordance with our Privacy Policy.