Big Brother Watch exposes police mass data raid without public or parliamentary consent
UK police forces are committing a “historic breach of the right to privacy”, according to documents obtained by civil liberties and privacy group Big Brother Watch (BBW) using Freedom of Information laws.
The number of times police are using passport and immigration information to identify ordinary members of the public has “skyrocketed”, according to BBW, in a mass attack on the civil liberties of UK citizens by dozens of police forces using ‘retrospective’ facial recognition technology in combination with the passport database. Victims of this invasion of privacy are unlikely ever to find out that their data rights have been breached.
According to BBW director Silkie Carlo:
ALL our passport photos are being secretly searched in a police facial recognition database. A national ID system has been built by the backdoor – without the public or parliament’s consent.
This is the stuff of dystopian nightmares. All our passport photos have been turned into police mugshots. We’ve instructed a legal team and are ready to take action if we have to. But Starmer is saying he wants police to EXPAND facial recognition surveillance of us all… we’re now having to fight multiple attacks on our liberty in the courts, as well as parliament.
The backdoor access means that people who have never committed a crime have had their data accessed and logged by police with little or no legal control or even governmental guidelines. Tory MP David Davis described this access as the creation of a secret biometric digital identity system without even parliamentary oversight.
Routine police use of facial recognition on ordinary members of the public has been spreading rapidly without any vote in Parliament or any legal authority, with permanent facial recognition camera systems installed in city centres, including by the Met Police, and now the regular misuse of passport photos.
Carlo again:
This [practice] has led to repeated, unjustified and ongoing intrusions on the entire population’s privacy. This astonishing revelation shows both our privacy and democracy are at risk from secretive AI policing, and that members of the public are now subject to the inevitable risk of misidentifications and injustice.
Privacy International‘s Nuno Guerreiro de Sousa added:
This secret program is a dangerous infringement on our fundamental rights to privacy and to express ourselves freely, both online and in public. It is especially hypocritical that this is happening in a country that prides itself on upholding human rights. This is why we are standing firm in challenging it.
The Home Office claims that the police use of passport images is “limited and carefully controlled” and indicated that it plans to extend it, with as-yet undisclosed plans in place.
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I said many years ago (when biometric passports were introduced) that exactly this would happen.
I’ll bet they’ve still kept hold of innocent people’s dna records that they’re supposed to have deleted, too.
Sadly, wholly expected.
If our governments weren’t such a bunch of corrupt, incompetent C***s they wouldn’t be so scared of us.
Expect NO action from the Data Protection Office; they are as useless as the water regulator.
✅ Yes, the use of facial recognition by UK police is increasing.
– There is a TOTAL absence of a clear legal framework governing its use.
– No UK law explicitly mentions or regulates live facial recognition, and
– Parliament has never debated or approved its use.
This lack of democratic mandate and legal oversight means police forces are effectively “writing their own rules” about how and when to deploy the technology.
Renowned servant of the security state, Keir Starmer is exactly the wrong type of politician to be ‘overseeing’ (sic) this.
✅ Thank heaven that Big Brother Watch has set-up a landmark judicial review against the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office.
✅ Unregulated facial recognition technology is a strong threat to civil liberties, privacy, and democratic accountability.
✅ Starmer will turn the UK into a high-tech surveillance state (Stalin is as Stalin does).