The 250th Appleby Horse Fair in Cumbria has become the testing ground for live facial recognition technology by police, sparking a major split in the travelling community. While some say it deters troublemakers, others call it a discriminatory overreach that targets their people.
I am standing on a stone bridge over the swollen River Eden in the quaint - and, for 51 weeks of the year, blissfully quiet - Cumbrian town of Appleby as a tracksuit-clad child walks past pulling a tiny, ragged pony.
Next, three young men with slicked-back hair tear towards the centre of the market town on a horse-drawn cart while another group sporting chunky gold jewellery enjoy pints of beer and the company of alarmingly scantily-clad teenage girls. Some 30,000 travellers, gypsies and spectators have descended on Appleby-in-Westmoreland for the 250th annual Appleby Horse Fair, where keen horsemen and women from across Britain trade their animals, buy and sell goods and, according to many of Appleby's year-round residents, enjoy a hell of a knees-up.
There is one thing everybody on this bridge over the river where travellers infamously 'wash' their horses in a centuries-old tradition, have in common: we are being watched. A camera mounted to a nearby police van is filming us at this very moment - an artificial intelligence program gathering data on our facial features to assess whether we are officially 'wanted'.
Thankfully, as my image is fed into the system, the screen in the van being monitored by two genial officers from Greater Manchester Police's technology unit notes that, as it stands, I am not wanted. That's a relief.
However, the use of this technology for the first time at Appleby, which in previous years has been marred by incidents of fighting, drug-taking and countless arrests, has caused an unprecedented divide in the travelling community as they find themselves at war with one another. On one side are the likes of 65-year-old Billy Welch, the gypsy spokesman, or 'Shera Rom', who helps to organise the festival.
As someone who is not wanted or known to police, Daily Mail's Special Correspondent Glen Keogh was flagged up as 'unknown' by the police's live facial recognition cameras. Talking Glen through the controversial technology as they sat in the back of the van, PC Mark Mannion, of Greater Manchester Police, said: 'If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
' Mr Welch has backed the use of the technology, telling the Daily Mail: 'If you haven't done anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about. ' On the opposing side are the likes of reformed ex-prisoner Tommy Joyce, from Manchester, who campaigns to stop 'anti-gypsy discrimination'. He says Mr Welch is akin to an 'informant' for 'allowing' the police to implement such a heinous scheme to root out potential wrongdoers.
He is backed by John Reilly, founder of the Gypsy Traveller League, who has said 'no travelling man sits with police while members of his own community are being targeted, stopped, searched - and even locked up.
' Only rolled out to forces outside London's Metropolitan Police last year, the AI facial-recognition tech is used to spot alleged criminals or those previously banned from events. Mugshots are fed into the system and, if the cameras spot a likely match, the computer provides a rating of how likely it is to have identified the correct 'wanted' person - with 64 per cent being the lowest for police to act and 99 per cent being a near-on certainty.
It never provides a 100 per cent rating of accuracy. It has already been used at football matches and other events which attract large crowds across Britain. Announcing the rollout at Appleby, David Allen, Cumbria's police commissioner warned: 'Individuals who come to Appleby who are wanted or they are known to police, this will capture you.
' He added: 'You might want to think about whether this is the best place for you to be during that week. ' And has it had the desired effect? Well, speaking to gypsies who have been visiting Appleby for decades, this year's festival is said to be one of the quietest for many years.
The forecast rain played a part but the idea of wanted men facing immediate arrest because they have been identified by the police's camera may also have been the deterrent it was intended to be. Indeed, the talk around the campsites has been of the new 'heavy-handed' approach of police officers, who have been sent from neighbouring forces in their hundreds for a 24/7 operation.
'The cheek of you, to get facial-recognition cameras brought into Appleby, which has been going for centuries,' Joyce raged in a Facebook video directed at Mr Welch. The deployment of live facial recognition at the historic Appleby Horse Fair has sparked both approval and fierce opposition within the travelling community. While police hail it as an effective deterrent against criminal elements, critics decry it as a discriminatory heavy-handed tactic that fractures community trust.
The fair, a centuries-old tradition, now stands at the crossroads of security technology and civil liberties, with significant implications for how public surveillance is contested in spaces of cultural importance
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