Police forces in England and Wales have uploaded up to 18 million “mugshots” to a facial recognition database - despite a court ruling it could be unlawful.
They include photos of people never charged, or others cleared of an offence, and were uploaded without Home Office approval.
Photos of “hundreds of thousands” of innocent people may be on the database, an independent commissioner said. The database complies with the Data Protection Act, police insisted, according to a report by BBC’s Newsnight.
Biometrics commissioner Alastair MacGregor QC said he was concerned about the implications of the system for privacy and civil liberties.
Speaking in an interview, he told Newsnight that police forces had begun setting up a searchable database of police mugshots last year, without telling either him or the Home Office. Almost every police force in England and Wales had now supplied photographs, he said. It comes despite a ruling in 2012, when two people went to the high court to force the police to delete their photos from databases. The judge warned forces should revise their policies in “months, not years,” he said.
Another police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe stated that since the court case, his force had stopped putting images on the national database until the law had been clarified.
“So the broad concern is - are we keeping images of people who aren’t convicted, and are we using them?” he said. “I don’t think this is against the law but of course we always want to catch criminals.”
Potential Danger
MacGregor said police had been warned to put rules in place regarding the use of police mugshots - but had not done so. He said he recognized the potential value of the database to the police, but warned senior officers had rushed in without considering all the implications.
“These are important issues and it does seem to me surprising that they have not been addressed more carefully,” he said. “I think there is always a danger that if you can do something then you will do it, the technology takes over... without giving the attention to the other issues that arise in relation to it as one should.”
MacGregor said he also had concerns about the reliability of facial recognition technology.
“If the facial recognition software throws up a false match, one of the consequences of that could easily send an investigation off into the completely wrong direction,” he added.
Nationwide Program
A number of police forces have begun to use facial recognition technology across the UK. It is already used by Britain’s spy agencies and by Border Force at UK airports and ports.
Leicestershire police said the facial recognition system it had begun using last year had proved invaluable.
Andy Ramsay, identification manager at Leicestershire police, told Newsnight the force now had a database with 100,000 custody photos.
He said facial recognition could soon become even more important than DNA or fingerprints for the police.
“All three have a place. This is developing. This is going to be, I think, the most cost-effective way of finding criminals.”
Criticism
However, the use of the system has been criticized by some British parliament members. According to reports, liberal democrat cabinet office minister, David Laws, has written to the Home Office saying he is “alarmed” by the development. He has demanded urgent action to regulate the use of the database.
“I share the commissioner’s concerns that this database will include images of individuals who have never been convicted of a recordable offence,” he said.
David Davis, the former Tory shadow home secretary, said that police forces should not “misuse the data in this way”.
“There is a mind-set here, which is flawed. It’s quite understandable, police always want more powers, but I’m afraid the courts and parliament say there are limits,” he said. “You cannot treat innocent people the same way you treat guilty people.”
Norman Baker, the liberal democrat former Home Office minister, said police “ought to have stopped and asked themselves what they were doing and if it had public support.”
