Well, it was only a matter of time. Despite heavy backlash from locals, the Metropolitan Police is set to go ahead and install permanent live facial recognition cameras in Croydon, south London.

This will be a first for UK high street surveillance technology, and will 100% be used only on bad people, and only for justice, and will work so well that it will eventually be installed around other areas of London, and beyond.

The cameras scan faces of passersby and match them against a database of wanted criminals, so if you’ve got an evil identical twin out there, you could be in for some hassle.

The permanent installation follows a trial run in the area using mobile facial recognition vans, which apparently led to hundreds of arrests.

The cameras will be positioned on lampposts or buildings in Croydon, with filming set to go live in June or July this year. You’ll be walking around south London feeling like a big time celebrity getting papped from all angles!

Not to worry though – if no criminal match is found for your face, your image and data will be immediately deleted. No stress!

Mitch Carr, the Met’s neighbourhood policing superintendent for south London, wrote to local community figures explaining the new approach.

“I am currently working with the central team to install fixed LFR cameras in Croydon town centre. This will mean our use of LFR technology will be far more embedded as a ‘business as usual’ approach rather than relying on the availability of the LFR vans that are in high demand across London.

“It will remain the case that the cameras are only switched on when officers are deployed on the ground ready to respond to alerts.

“The end result will see cameras covering a defined area and will give us much more flexibility around the days and times we can run the operations.”

So apparently the system will only operate when officers are nearby and ready to respond to potential matches. Which I guess is slightly less dystopian than having them on 24/7 and running you against a criminal database automatically, but I guess these things happen incrementally. 

The question is – if LFR works perfectly and all the bad guys are identified, are they actually going to be punished? Because there doesn’t seem much point in these cameras otherwise. 

I guess we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out…

For the chilling moment a pervert was caught on CCTV targeting a teenage girl in a changing room at a leisure centre in Swansea, click HERE.