The UK police minister has pushed for facial recognition to be rolled out to all police forces nationwide in a move that would ignore critics who say the technology is inaccurate and some of its applications illegal.
The Home Office briefed the commissioner for biometrics and surveillance cameras during closed-door meetings on Chris Philp’s desire to expand the forces’ use of the controversial systems, according to a report to be presented to parliament on Tuesday. of the order.
Any such move by Philp, who was appointed state minister for crime, police and fire by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last October, risks divisiveness.
The use of facial recognition has come under widespread criticism and scrutiny of its impact on privacy and human rights. The European Union is moving to ban the technology in public spaces through its upcoming artificial intelligence law.
The report, co-authored by academics Pete Fussey and William Webster on behalf of the Biometrics and Surveillance Commissioner, examines proposals in the UK’s new data protection bill and argues that the proposed law will weaken oversight of the UK. surveillance.
The report said Philp had “expressed his desire to incorporate facial recognition technology into policing and is considering what else the government can do to support the police in this.” This expansion would likely explore “integrating this technology with police body-worn video,” he added.
Facial recognition software has been used by South Wales Police and the London Metropolitan Police over the past five years in multiple trials during events such as the Notting Hill Carnival and most recently during the coronation.
Theft previously revealed that the private owners of King’s Cross in London were using the technology on the general public, scanning known troublemakers and sharing the data with the Metropolitan Police. They have since stopped using the technology.
Facial recognition has been criticized by privacy activists and independent researchers who argue that it is inaccurate and biased, particularly towards darker skinned people.
In 2020, Appeal Court judges ruled that previous trials by South Wales Police over facial recognition software were illegal, although the force continues to use the technology. At the time of sentencing, South Wales Police said it would pay “serious attention” to the court’s findings and that its policies had evolved since the trials.
Last month, Met Police announced they conducted a review of the technology’s effectiveness and found “no statistically significant bias in relation to race and gender, and the chance of a false match is only 1 in 6,000 people walking past the camera”.
The UK’s Data Protection and Information Bill proposes to remove the requirement for a code of conduct for surveillance cameras and abolish the role of the surveillance cameras commissioner, a government-appointed official who encourages the compliance with the code and has other powers.
“We are truly at a critical juncture in the expansion of surveillance technology. We need to think carefully about the value of this technology to policing,” Fussey, a criminologist at the University of Essex and co-author of the report, told the Financial Times.
“It is legitimate to use this technology to protect people, but the question is whether it is legal and necessary to use it,”
He added that data protection legislation was a “decrease in poor oversight regulations of this technology” and that mechanisms were needed to ensure it was “used lawfully and responsibly”.
The Home Office said: “The government is committed to enabling the police to use new technologies such as facial recognition in a fair and proportionate way.
“Facial recognition plays a crucial role in helping police tackle serious crimes including homicide, stab crime, rape, child sexual exploitation and terrorism.”
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