UK secretly allows facial recognition scans of passport, immigration databases

Privacy groups report a surge in UK police facial recognition scans of databases secretly stocked with passport photos lacking parliamentary oversight.

Big Brother Watch says the UK government has allowed images from the country’s passport and immigration databases to be made available to facial recognition systems, without informing the public or parliament. The group claims the passport database contains around 58 million headshots of Brits, plus a further 92 million made available from sources such as the immigration database, visa applications, and more.

By way of comparison, the Police National Database contains circa 20 million photos of those who have been arrested by, or are at least of interest to, the police.

In a joint statement, Big Brother Watch, its director Silkie Carlo, Privacy International, and its senior technologist Nuno Guerreiro de Sousa, described the databases and lack of transparency as “Orwellian.” They have also written to both the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police, calling for a ban on the practice. The comments come after Big Brother Watch submitted Freedom of Information requests, which revealed a significant uptick in police scanning the databases in question as part of the force’s increasing facial recognition use.

To read the complete article see: The Register