Facial recognition software is nothing new, and there’s a good chance you’ve been zapped by it yourself if you’ve used an international airport recently. The tech has already raised concerns about privacy, discrimination and the right to hold peaceful protests, because it’s been used controversially in the UK at mass gatherings.
But now British authorities want to double-down on their scanning program by granting the UK police the right to use the photos on every registered driver’s license when running facial recognition searches. That’s 50 million people, the majority of whom have no prior criminal convictions, being subjected to searches without their consent.
The legal smallprint that looks likely to make this dystopian nightmare a reality is contained in a new criminal justice bill being introduced by the Conservative government. It would grant the police and National Crime Agency (NCA) the right to compare the biometric data of a person contained in one image, for example, from CCTV, with the data from a driving license. Authorities already use facial technology to check their database of images of known offenders, but this law would means law-abiding citizens being subject to the same kind of searches.
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Because law enforcement’s right to use license images in this way isn’t explicitly mentioned in the text of the bill, UK academics have accused the government of “sneaking it under the radar,” The Guardian reports.
“This is another slide down the ‘slippery slope’ of allowing police access to whatever data they so choose – with little or no safeguards,” Carole McCartney, a professor of law and criminal justice at the University of Leicester, told the newspaper.
“Where is the public debate? How is this legitimate if the public don’t accept the use of the DVLA and passport databases in this way?”
But the UK Home Office told The Guardian that clause 21 in the bill wouldn’t automatically grant law enforcement agencies access to Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) assets.
“Any further developments would be subject to further engagement as the public would expect,” a spokesperson said.