The Letter That Started It

Before there was a national FOI project, a tracker, dozens of police responses or a website called Seen. Not Processed., there was a letter to our MP.

On 17 August 2026, we wrote to Alex Mayer MP about the expansion of police facial-recognition technology and a concern that had become increasingly difficult to ignore.

The technology was developing quickly.

The framework governing it was not keeping pace.

Our letter asked why facial-recognition capability was being expanded before Parliament had created a bespoke statutory framework governing its use. It also raised questions about what happens to biometric information after it has been collected: how long it is retained, how deletion is verified, what auditing exists, how facial-recognition datasets might interact with other information and AI systems, and how use of the technology outside policing should be regulated.

The concern was not simply whether facial recognition could help the police.

It plainly can.

The question was what safeguards should exist around a technology capable of identifying and analysing people in public spaces at scale — and how the public could know those safeguards were actually working.

At that point, this was simply a constituent writing to their MP.

There was no plan to send Freedom of Information requests across the country.

No national spreadsheet.

No comparison of police-force responses.

No Section 31 wall.

But one question in particular stayed with us.

Police policies repeatedly describe safeguards around the handling and deletion of facial-recognition data.

What evidence exists showing that those safeguards actually operate in practice?

Four days later, we decided to find out.

And that is where Seen. Not Processed. really begins.