The British Security Industry Association (BSIA) is calling on the UK Government for clarity on how it intends to fill the void left after the recent resignation of its Biometric & Surveillance Camera Commissioner (B&SCC) and the abolition of its office.
The commissioner, Prof Fraser Sampson, as featured in the September print edition of Professional Security Magazine, this month in a letter of resignation to Home Secretary Suella Braverman said that he will remain in post until the end of October.
The SCC’s functions are expected to be subsumed by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, as part of the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill (DPDI), which is proceeding through Parliament. The trade association notes that the Bill, as written, also removes the need for the Government to publish a Surveillance Camera Code of Practice.
The BSIA says that it has worked with the Office of the Surveillance Camera Commissioner since its formation in 2014 and the commissioner before Sampson, Tony Porter, welcomed the opportunity of engagement from the BSIA. The association went on to lead two of the industry strands of work around the National Surveillance Camera Strategy for England & Wales. In this capacity, the BSIA worked with others to create several foundation documents, including the list of key recommended standards for use in video surveillance systems, a buyers’ toolkit, the passport to compliance, and a ‘Secure by Default’ self-certification scheme for manufacturers (suspended by Sampson in August 2022, then closed and those who gained the certification were asked to stop displaying the ‘kitemark’).
As the BSIA adds, a great deal of this work is set to be archived when the office is finally closed and it is unclear how the transfer of the functions of the B&SCC will be carried out in practice, and if engagement with industry practitioners will even be a consideration.
Dave Wilkinson, Director of Technical Services at the BSIA, pictured, said: “We are both disappointed and concerned about the proposed abolition of the B&SCC. Given the prolific emergence of biometric technologies associated with video surveillance, now is a crucial time for government, industry, and the independent commissioner(s) to work close together to ensure video surveillance is used appropriately, proportionately, and most important, ethically.
“We are therefore, on behalf of our industry asking for clarity on how the government intends to fill the void. The B&SCC was a sterling example of a government and private sector partnership with tangible outcomes of benefit to all; failure to continue in a similar vein would be detrimental to any progress in future implementation of codes of conduct.”
Parting shot
In a parting shot, Fraser Sampson has recently published a commentary made in response to the New Zealand regulator the Office of the Privacy Commission (OPC). In part Sampson said that ‘if we are to get the most from biometric surveillance technology, a systemic approach to regulation is needed, focusing on integrity – of both technology and practice – along with clear standards for everything and everyone involved because, in a systemic setting, compromising part means compromising the whole’. He summed up that ‘a set of clear, indefeasible principles by which agencies will be held transparently and auditably to account for their use of biometrics is required’.
