Metropolitan Police profiling children “on a large scale,” documents show

Force says Project Alpha scours social media to find offenders and fight serious violence.

A Metropolitan Police document says the project “will carry out profiling on a large scale.”

Metropolitan Police documents say the force has been collecting “children’s data” from social media sites as part of a project to conduct “profiling on a large scale.”

The Metropolitan Police says the scheme, known as Project Alpha, helps fight serious violence with the intelligence gathered to find offenders and secure the removal of videos glorifying stabbings and shootings from platforms such as YouTube.

The unit, forming over thirty staff and launched in 2019 with Home Office funding, scours social media sites looking at drill music videos and other content.

A Metropolitan Police document seen by the Guardian says the project “will carry out profiling on a large scale,” with males aged 15 to 21 a project focus. After questioning, the force said both were a mistake.

Metropolitan Police blunders over an earlier anti-gang database helped fuel concerns about Project Alpha, children's privacy, and police focusing on young Black children for signs of criminality.

Stafford Scott, a veteran community campaigner, said he feared the project was part of a continued assault on young Black people. “Young people use social media to magnify their lived experience. It is a tool for projection; you cannot rely on it for detection,” he said. “It is racially motivated, racially driven and involves racial stereotypes.”

The Metropolitan Police says it scoured the scheme for signs of racial bias in an equalities impact assessment and found none.

Project Alpha started in June 2019 and is supported by the Home Office, which has supplied almost £5,000,000. While heavily redacted, the new document dated December 2020 provides further details.

It is a data protection impact assessment and forms questions examining compliance with data protection laws and principles and answers from those running the scheme. It was first obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from the investigative organisation Point Source.

The document says males aged 15 to 21 will be targeted and promises not to share information about young people without a “compelling” reason.

Asked, “Will there be systematic monitoring or profiling on a large scale or in a public place?” the response is “yes”, but the rest of the answer is mainly blanked out.

Asked, “will the project conduct profiling on a large scale?” the box for “yes” was ticked by the Metropolitan Police. The answer continues: “The meaning of large scale is not defined in the Data Protection Act 2018. But this may include using existing data to find an individual for operational purposes or review.”

Asked whether the project will “process children’s data for profiling or automated decision making… or for marketing purposes…,” the police replied “yes”. They added: “The project is focused on reducing serious youth violence, and many of those involved directly or indirectly are under the age of eighteen.” A full name and gang affiliation are to be recorded, it says.

In its first statement to the Guardian about the document, the Metropolitan Police said: “The inclusion of the demographic 15-21 years old was an error. As we do not “profile on a large scale”, we cannot supply any demographic of individuals who engage in uploading harmful content online. We do not look to find personal information about those posting the videos; we hold limited personal data, just the videos themselves.”

Asked why officers had ticked “yes” to a box asking if the project would “carry out profiling on a large scale,” the Metropolitan Police added: “The checking of the yes box at point ten of this initial response is incorrect.”

The force declined to give the number or ages of those Alpha looks at or broad criteria such as whether suspicion about an individual is needed.

The document says the scheme has been designed to “combine, compare, or match data from multiple sources” and uses modern technologies or the “novel use of existing technologies.”

It says gangs manage four out of ten non-domestic and terrorist killings, six out of ten shootings and one in five non-domestic stabbings where the victim is twenty-five or under.

In the document, police justify their decision not to tell young people they are “subject to the interest of Project Alpha as this may impact on their behaviour and result in more offending.”

Trust in the Metropolitan Police was damaged after the information commissioner criticised it for its gang matrix and issued an enforcement notice in 2018. The matrix, listing alleged gang members and their risk of committing violence or being a victim, was branded racist by Amnesty International. After pressure, the Metropolitan Police said it had changed it.

Emmanuelle Andrews of the human rights group Liberty said: “This surveillance and monitoring of young people and children is deeply worrying, affecting their right to express themselves and to participate in friendship and community networks. It can have dire consequences for their futures, such as their ability to access housing, education, and work.

“Police monitoring of the kind done by the Metropolitan Police under Project Alpha and the gangs’ matrix doesn’t tackle the causes of serious violence - it only serves to criminalise and harass young people, particularly young Black men and boys.”

In an interview with the College of Policing, the head of Project Alpha, PC Michael Railton, hailed its benefits. “Having decoded the hyper-local context of the lyrics, hand gestures and symbolism of the visual content used by aspiring rappers, we have identified threats and proactively intervened to prevent escalation of violence,” he said.

The Metropolitan Police told the information commissioner that Alpha helped find intelligence about violence gleaned from social media and of people committing offences as well as tracing wanted offenders: “The team collect “open source” information that is information gathered from private and open social media accounts, websites, and mainstream media. They also collect post-event information, such as where gang-related incidents have occurred and relevant online commentary.

“The project has brought to light threats and risk that would otherwise not have been identified through other policing methods.”