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UK: POLICE EXPLOIT LAW TO COLLECT 18 MILLION FACIAL IMAGES

03 February 2015

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"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, Newsnight has learned...

Biometrics Commissioner Alastair MacGregor QC said he was concerned about the implications of the system for privacy and civil liberties. Speaking in his first 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....

Mr 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,"" [emphasis added]

See the article: Innocent people' on police photos database (BBC News, link)

"Facial images" are a biometric along with DNA and fingerprints. See: Office of Biometrics Commissioner (link) and: 1st Annual Report (pdf)

Background: EU-UK: Major victory in the European Court of Human Rights: ECHR finds that the UK practice of keeping the fingerprints and DNA of people not convicted of an offence is a violation of Article 8 of the ECHR Convention (Statewatch database)

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