I t happened in a flash outside Barclays in Croydon town centre. A digital trap snapped shut around one of Britain’s thousands of wanted criminals. In little over a minute, a combination of high-definition cameras, automated AI face scanning and half a dozen police officers had run a wanted man to ground. After the handcuffs clicked shut, the Metropolitan police’s controversial live facial recognition (LFR) cameras had chalked up another arrest: the fifth in 45 minutes on a regular Thursday morning. The arrest was one of hundreds made during a six-month Met police pilot of LFR cameras on vans and fixed to lamp-posts, as also seen across cities in China, the UAE, India and Israel. Critics have c alled the technology invasive, unregulated and anti-democratic, cited studies suggesting racial bias and called for it to be scrapped. But the Met police commissioner, Mark Rowley, has said it is “gamechanging” and keeps the public safe.…