CIVIL liberties campaigners launched a landmark legal challenge today to the Met’s use of “Orwellian” facial recognition cameras.

Big Brother Watch and Green Party peer Jenny Jones have filed papers with the High Court seeking permission to judicially review the Met’s use of automatic facial recognition (AFR).

AFR has been deployed at the Notting Hill Carnival and last year’s Remembrance Sunday.

Campaigners say the use of the technology not only represents an unlawful invasion of privacy but it is not even effective.

Big Brother Watch revealed in May that the Met’s own research showed that on more than 98 per cent of occasions members of the public were wrongly identified and that the force has made no arrests using AFR.

Trials of AFR by South Wales Police fared little better, with 91 per cent of its “matches” wrongly capturing innocent people.

Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo said: “Facial recognition CCTV subjects members of the public to a constant police line-up.

“When the police use facial recognition surveillance they subject thousands of people in the area to highly sensitive identity checks without consent.

“Facial recognition cameras are not only authoritarian, they’re dangerously inaccurate. The use of this technology by the police risks taking us down a slippery slope towards an Orwellian society.”

Ms Jones said: “The police’s refusal to stop using automated facial recognition cameras leaves me with no choice but to bring this human rights challenge.

“This new form of surveillance lacks a legal basis, tramples over civil liberties and it hasn’t been properly debated in Parliament.”

The Met will be using facial recognition at a location in Stratford tomorrow as part of ongoing trials.

Detective Superintendent Bernie Galopin said “the deployment of these cameras and targeting of individuals will be intelligence-led and temporary” and there would be a “full, independent evaluation” of their use at the end of the year.