Leicestershire Police

Engadget (17 June 2015) reported that Leicestershire Police used facial recognition software at the Download Festival, with some 90,000 attendees, without telling attendees beforehand. Cameras scanned faces and compared them with a list of known offenders. The force said the cameras did not take or store anyone's photograph, that the software only compared faces against a list of people known to commit crimes at festivals, and that all data was destroyed at the end of the weekend; Chief Superintendent Chris Haward called it 'an efficient and effective way of picking known offenders out of a crowd'. Engadget says the force had been trialling NEC's NeoFace software but does not confirm it was the system used at the festival, and reports no matches or arrests. A Leicestershire Police response of 28 May 2021 (reference 1495/21) states 'Leicestershire Police do not use Live Facial Recognition'. The Home Office factsheet of 4 December 2025 lists Leicestershire among 13 forces that 'have used or are using' live facial recognition; the only live use found is this 2015 event.