Judgment Approved by the court for handing down
R (Bridges) v CCSWP and SSHD
arrests were made during this deployment. There were no false alerts. There
was one correct match – one of the 6 people who had been arrested the
previous year was correctly identified as being at the event. She had made a
false bomb report the previous year, and had been convicted of that offence
and sentenced to a suspended sentence order of 18 months’ imprisonment. The
information that the offender was at the event was passed to the Event
Commander, but no further action was taken.
15.
The Claimant’s evidence is that he attended a protest outside the Motorpoint
Arena. He stated in his witness statement that he was 25-30 metres away from
the AFR-equipped van, albeit at one point he walked along the pavement in
front of the arena and would have been closer than that. Prior to seeing the
van, he was not aware that AFR was in use. He did not observe SWP officers
providing any information about the use of AFR.
16.
It is not now possible for SWP to check either whether the Claimant’s image
was recorded by CCTV on 21st December 2018 or 27th March 2018, or
whether his facial biometric information was processed by the AFR system on
either occasion. If this data was processed, then the technology would have
identified that the Claimant was not a person of interest who was included on
the watchlist for either of these deployments. His biometric data and facial
image would have been immediately deleted from the AFR system. He has
not been included on an SWP watchlist in its deployments of AFR to date.
SWP does not hold any of his personal data (except as a result of these
proceedings).
Claimant’s standing, and grounds of challenge
17.
Notwithstanding this, SWP does not seek to challenge the Claimant’s standing
to bring these judicial review proceedings; and SWP does not dispute that the
Claimant is a victim for the purposes of section 7 of the Human Rights Act
1998. For pragmatic reasons, SWP accepts the Claimant’s evidence that he
was present at Queen’s Street and at the Motorpoint Arena, and that on those
occasions his image was recorded.
18.
The Claimant’s overall contention is that SWP’s use of AFR Locate, on the
two occasions referred to above and generally, is contrary both to Convention
rights (Ground 1) and the requirements of data protection legislation (Ground
3). The Claimant also contends that when deciding to implement use of AFR
Locate, SWP failed to comply with the public-sector equality duty (i.e. the
obligation on public authorities such as SWP, under section 149(1) of the
Equality Act 2010, to have “due regard” to certain prescribed matters when
exercising their functions) (Ground 4). We refer to these below as (1) the
Convention Rights Claim, (2) the Data Protection Claims, and (3) the PublicSector Equality Duty Claim, respectively.
19.
As to the Convention Rights Claim, the Claimant contends that using AFR
Locate is an interference with his rights under ECHR article 8(1); and that, for