Essex Police suspended its live facial recognition deployments after internal assessment identified potential accuracy and bias risks, according to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, which has published an audit of the force’s program.
The pause followed challenges from civil society groups, including Big Brother Watch, which identified a methodological problem in Essex Police’s earlier self-assessment: the 0.6 confidence threshold used to trigger matches was derived from NEC’s Neoface algorithm, employed by other UK forces, rather than from Corsight’s Apollo 4 system that Essex Police actually deployed. Applying a threshold calibrated for one vendor’s algorithm to a different system introduces reliability uncertainty that the force’s internal evaluation did not adequately address.
Three independent evaluations have now been published. The ICO conducted a data protection audit of the Essex program. The UK National Physical Laboratory published an accuracy and equitability evaluation of Corsight’s Apollo 4 system. Cambridge University separately evaluated Essex Police’s operational use of the technology. Together, the reports are intended to provide an evidence base for a potential relaunch of the program under more rigorous standards.
The ICO has been conducting a rolling series of audits of police forces deploying live facial recognition, with reviews of South Wales, Gwent, Essex, and other forces planned as part of a broader outcomes report due in spring 2026. The regulator has consistently argued that data protection law must remain central to police facial recognition governance, irrespective of the operational benefits forces report.
Essex Police previously deployed Corsight’s system at public events, leading to multiple arrests. The force made seven arrests at Southend events in October 2024 using the technology. Those operational results contributed to the case for continued deployment, but the methodological inconsistency in threshold-setting undermined confidence in the program’s evidentiary basis.
Corsight AI supplies Apollo 4 under a contract managed through Digital Barriers, which holds the law enforcement distribution relationship in the UK market. The vendor evaluations published by NPL are intended to independently verify performance characteristics that police forces have typically assessed using vendor-supplied data.
Sources: Information Commissioner’s Office, Essex Police
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
