Welsh police to use facial recognition app
Police in Wales will soon begin using a facial recognition smartphone app. Civil liberties and human rights groups warn of severe encroachment on individuals’ privacy rights. British police have also been criticized for continuing to retain photos despite a court ruling stating that they must delete them.
Officers in Gwent and South Wales will be given the app, known as Operator Initiated Facial Recognition (OIFR). It has been tested by 70 officers and will now be introduced for use in routine police work, South Wales Police announced last week.
Police will use the app on smartphones issued to them by the force. Officers can take photos of individuals they encounter while on patrol or feed images from surveillance cameras into the app, the BBC reports. The software will then compare the biometric data found in the uploaded image against data taken from photos stored in police databases. The goal is to help determine the identity of people wanted by police. Individuals who are unconscious or deceased could also be identified in this manner, South Wales Police stated.
According to South Wales Police, photos taken by the app, and the biometric data associated with them, will not be retained after running the comparison.
Critics warn of encroachment on fundamental rights
Critics of the measure include the British human rights organization Liberty. Charlie Whelton of the group told the BBC that the technology was a “deeply invasive breach of our privacy rights, data protection laws and equality laws.”
Jake Hurfurt of Big Brother Watch, a civil liberties group, warned that the app “creates a dangerous imbalance” between the rights of individuals and the police’s powers.
He warned further: “This Orwellian tech is alarmingly close to introducing ID cards by the back door.” ID cards were in fact introduced in the UK in 2009, but were discontinued in 2011.
Said Hurfurt: “In Britain, none of us has to identify ourselves to police without very good reason, but this unregulated surveillance tech threatens to take that fundamental right away.” Hurfurt calls on the government to regulate the use of facial recognition in order to protect the rights of individuals, and to stop police from using “mobile face-scanning tech.”
Hurfurt also pointed out that “South Wales Police will search against thousands of unlawfully held photos every time they do a face scan.”
Police have retained photos unlawfully for years
As Britain’s Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner wrote in his annual report, published earlier this month, it is “a concern” that police continue to retain photos of persons who were detained but never charged with a crime. Every person taken into custody by police is photographed, according to the report. Even if these individuals are never charged with a crime, their photos are retained and may be used “for facial recognition purposes.”
According to the Guardian, the UK’s high court ruled in 2012 “that keeping images of people who faced no action or who were charged and then acquitted was unlawful. Despite the ruling, custody images of innocent people are still on the Police National Database,” which all local police forces in the UK are able to access.
A 2017 review by the British government found that the database contained more than 19 million photos. More than 16 million of these photos can be searched using facial recognition technology.
Charlie Whelton of Liberty told the Guardian that it is “deeply concerning” that the police are continuing to retain the sensitive biometric data of people who were never charged with a crime – and even using it for facial recognition purposes. “The police need to answer as to why they are still holding this highly personal data more than 10 years after the courts said this is against the law.”
A spokesperson for the British Home Office told the Guardian that the police set the rules for the retention of custody images. “If individuals who have not been convicted want their images deleted they can request this.”
Jake Hurfurt of Big Brother Watch told the Guardian: “Police and the Home Office have no idea how many people’s photographs they hold unlawfully.” Hurfurt pointed to the example of the police force in Scotland, which had shown that it was possible to delete such images – other forces, he said, must follow Scotland’s lead.
The Guardian reports that Police Scotland only uploads custody images into the UK’s national database if a person has been charged. “Police Scotland also reviews custody images to delete those not linked to a live prosecution or conviction.”
Millions invested in facial recognition
In April of this year the British government, then led by the Conservative party, announced plans to invest millions in facial recognition technology for use by the police. Current Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the Labor party, who took office in July, has also spoken in favor of the use of facial recognition technology. According to a notice published in November, the government is now looking to invest up to £20 million in the technology.
Several police forces in the UK use so-called Live Facial Recognition – and some have done so for years. After being falsely identified by London’s Metropolitan Police, one man filed suit against London police in May.
In 2020 an appeals court found the use of facial recognition by police in South Wales unlawful, ruling that the right to privacy of the man who had brought suit against the police had been violated. The claimant’s face had been scanned at a demonstration and on other occasions. After the ruling, civil liberties groups demanded that police stop use of the technology – police however claimed that they could continue their trials after making changes.
In a 2022 study, researchers from the University of Cambridge criticized the tests of the Operator Initiated Facial Recognition app in South Wales, citing, among other reasons, the fact that images were being compared against unlawfully retained photos. The researchers called for a ban on police use of facial recognition. (js)