Our Ref:         FOI-2439-1920

Thank you for your request received on 12 November 2019 refining your request for correspondence regarding facial recognition technology.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. I can confirm we do hold the information you require.

We have carried out a search for all emails held by TfL sent to/received from the GLA and the Metropolitan Police produced 2159 hits. We also did a separate search just for emails to/from Argent, however this search did not produce any results and so we do not hold any emails between TfL and Argent on the subject of facial recognition.

As previously, a brief review of the 2,159 results indicates that a number of these will not be relevant, however as they mention ‘facial recognition’ they have been captured by the search. Examples of this include general media summary/round up emails in which the subject of facial recognition is featured, however it isn’t specifically correspondence on the subject of facial recognition. We would therefore need to review all of these emails to determine which, if any, are specifically relevant to your request.

To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider narrowing its scope further. At present we are carrying out the search using the term ‘facial recognition.’ If there are any additional keywords that you would like us to search for this would allow us to do a more targeted search depending on your specific area of interest.

However, for the reasons outlined above, we recommend that requests are as specific as possible as to the information being sought. This is especially true in the case of correspondence requests as, by their very nature, they can incorporate large volumes of information, much of which would be likely to be of very limited interest or value. We also encourage requesters to take into account the guidance and advice provided by the ICO such as the “dos and don’ts” published on its website here https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/official-information/ in order to make the best use of the processing time available under the FOI Act. It can be far more productive to request specific reports, documents or ask direct questions rather than cast a wide email search as the burden created by these can often result in consideration of an exemption on the basis of the time required to complete

Please note that we will not be taking further action until we receive your revised request.

In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your request, please feel free to contact me.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Gemma Jacob
Senior FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London

[email protected]