The UK Government has gone out to consultation for a legal framework for the use of facial recognition and biometrics by the police. The consultation runs to February 12.
In a foreword to the document, Home Office Crime and Policing Minister, Sarah Jones acknowledged ‘legitimate concerns about this powerful technology’. “There are questions we must address about the state’s powers to process its citizens’ biometric data, and about public confidence in the police to act proportionately. And we know some people have significant doubts about this.”
Expanded use
She described facial recognition as the biggest breakthrough for catching criminals since DNA matching. She said: “It has already helped take thousands of dangerous criminals off our streets and has huge potential to strengthen how the police keep us safe. We will expand its use so that forces can put more criminals behind bars and tackle crime in their communities.” And Lindsey Chiswick, National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) lead for facial recognition, said: “Live facial recognition is already subject to strong safeguards and rigorous oversight, and policing remains committed to using it proportionately and responsibly. Public trust is vital, and we want to build on that by listening to people’s views. This consultation is an opportunity for the public to help shape how live facial recognition continues to be deployed, what protections matter most, and how policing can continue to use it in a way that reinforces confidence. ”
Proposed
What’s proposed is a ‘legal framework that sets out rules for the overt use of facial recognition by law enforcement’, and a standards body, giving oversight. The document sets out the three types of such recognition available to the police; processing live video footage of people passing a camera, compared against a specific watchlist of wanted people; retrospective use of facial recognition; and (in use by two unnamed police forces), ‘a mobile app which allows officers on the street to conduct an identity check against the custody image database’.
Comment
At the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, Silkie Carlo said: “For our streets to be safer the government need to focus their resources on real criminals rather than spending public money turning the country into an open prison with surveillance of the general population. Facial recognition surveillance is out of control, with the police’s own records showing over seven million innocent people in England and Wales have been scanned by police facial recognition cameras in the past year alone.
“Live facial recognition could be the end of privacy as we know it. With the government now threatening to introduce mandatory ID cards with our facial biometrics on them too, we are hurtling towards an authoritarian surveillance state that would make Orwell roll in his grave.”
Photo by Mark Rowe: street art, Ghent, Belgium.
