A clause in the Criminal Justice Bill currently at committee stage in the House of Commons, will enable the police to run facial recognition searches on a database containing images of Britain’s 50 million driving licence holders.
This will enable the police or the National Crime Agency (NCA) to search the database for a name to match an image captured by CCTV or shared on social media. According to privacy campaigners this puts every holder of a driving licence in a permanent police lineup.
The measure hasn’t received a great deal of public scrutiny, possibly because isn’t referenced in the main part of the bill. Once the bill becomes law, the Home Secretary of the day will have to establish “driver information regulations” to enable the searches, but according to the bill, will only have to consult police bodies – which are highly likely to be in favour of the measure – to be able to do that.
The use of facial recognition technology is controversial. Police are already using it increasingly at major public events and protests and comparing live camera feeds against databases of known identities. This in itself poses a threat to the rights of individuals to privacy and freedom of expression and assembly according to campaigners.
Concerns have been expressed for some time about the accuracy of facial recognition technology, particularly when it comes to the identification of Black and Asian faces. Computing reported yesterday on concerns raised about the accuracy of this technology by employees of Nvidia (which make the GPU chips which are necessary to train underlying AI models ) in 2020.
Carole McCartney, a professor of law and criminal justice at the University of Leicester, said to The Guardian that the lack of consultation over the change in law raised questions over the legitimacy of the new powers.
She said: “This is another slide down the ‘slippery slope’ of allowing police access to whatever data they so choose – with little or no safeguards. 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?”
More power to the police
At present, access to driving licence records is controlled under regulations related to the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000, which requires the police to provide a good cause relating to a contravention of mainly road traffic acts.
However, this scope looks to be expanded considerably by the new bill. An explanatory note to says that “clause 21 clarifies who can access the driver data and enables regulations to provide for access to DVLA driver information for all policing or law enforcement purposes”. This amount to quite the expansion of remit.
During the first committee hearing for the bill earlier this month, policing minister, Chris Philp, when questioning Graeme Biggar, the director general of the National Crime Agency, indicated what the underlying intention of this clause might be. Philps is a consistent advocate of applying facial recognition software to existing databases.
At the hearing Philp said: “There is a power in clause 21 to allow police and law enforcement, including the NCA, to access driving licence records to do a facial recognition search, which, anomalously, is currently quite difficult.
“When you get a crime scene image from CCTV or something like that, do you agree it would be useful to be able to do a facial recognition search across DVLA records as well as the other records that can currently be accessed?”
Biggar responded: “Yes, it would. It is really important for us to be able to use facial recognition more. I know that is an issue you have been championing.”
Prof Peter Fussey, a former independent reviewer of the Met’s use of facial recognition, said: “This constitutes another example of how facial recognition surveillance is becoming extended without clear limits or independent oversight of its use. The minister highlights how such technologies are useful and convenient. That police find such technologies useful or convenient is not sufficient justification to override the legal human rights protections they are also obliged to uphold.”
A Home Office spokesperson said to The Guardian: “Clause 21 in the criminal justice bill clarifies the law around safeguarding and accountability of police force’s use of DVLA records.
“It does not allow for automatic access to DVLA records for facial recognition. Any further developments would be subject to further engagement as the public would expect.”
Wanda Parisien is a computing expert who navigates the vast landscape of hardware and software. With a focus on computer technology, software development, and industry trends, Wanda delivers informative content, tutorials, and analyses to keep readers updated on the latest in the world of computing.
