UK police have ‘culture of retention’ around biometric data
The UK’s biometrics commissioner, Fraser Sampson, has advised MPs and Lords there’s a “non-deletion culture” in policing as regards to the retention of individuals’s biometric info, even when they aren’t convicted of a criminal offense.
Addressing Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) on 22 February 2023, Sampson mentioned the default in UK policing was to hold onto biometric info, regardless of whether or not it was legally allowed. “It’s really clear, and I think it’s occurred on every visit we did to every police force,” he mentioned.
When requested to outline biometric info, Sampson mentioned that whereas there may be “a drift towards excluding lots of things” from the definition of biometrics by sure teams, notably the UK authorities, it ought to embody “any unique manifestation … that can be accurately measured, recorded and compared with other records” for the needs of figuring out a person. This would come with any data associated to an individual’s gait, voice, face, DNA or prints.
He added that the proliferation of biometric surveillance instruments – many of which use synthetic intelligence (AI) in some capability – brings up a quantity of human rights issues around, for instance, bias and discrimination towards teams or people, privateness, freedom of motion, and freedom of meeting or speech.
Less mentioned, mentioned Sampson, was the optimistic obligation of the state to stop residents from struggling inhumane or degrading remedy, which he contends biometrics may assist with.
However, he mentioned, even in situations the place an individual is rarely convicted after an arrest, police will nonetheless retain biometric info within the kind of custody photographs (which might then be used to populate facial recognition watch lists, for instance), DNA and fingerprints.
“This was challenged back in 2012 … and the trial judge in that said ‘you need to get rid of that – you can’t retain them if people have done nothing wrong or are of no further interest’,” mentioned Sampson.
The 2012 High Court ruling particularly discovered the retention of custody photographs by the Metropolitan Police to be illegal on the premise that details about unconvicted individuals was being handled in the identical means as details about individuals who have been finally convicted, and that the six-year retention interval was disproportionate.
However, regardless of the ruling being handed down in 2012, the identical issues are persisting, which is finally damaging public belief.
“I’m here today saying there are probably several million of those records still,” he mentioned, including that the response from policing our bodies and the Home Office (which owns most of the biometric database utilized by UK police) is to level out the knowledge is held on a database with no bulk deletion functionality.
“I’m not sure that works for public trust and confidence, but even if it did … you can’t [legally] rely on a flaw in a database you built for unlawfully retaining stuff … that’s a technical problem that’s of the country’s and the police’s making rather than the people whose images you’ve kept.”
The identical difficulty was introduced up by Sampson’s predecessor, Paul Wiles, in March 2019, when he highlighted the retention of custody photographs as a significant downside to the Science and Technology Committee. Wiles later referred to as on Parliament to explicitly legislate on the use of biometric applied sciences to supply better readability on how police may use individuals’s delicate info.
Sampson mentioned that whereas some forces have now began issuing “discharge information” to individuals being launched from custody that outlines how they’ll have their facial photographs deleted, the onus to pursue deletion continues to be on the person fairly than the police.
He added that when deletion is pursued by a person, there additionally must be confidence that it’s going to really occur. “As well as having the wherewithal, capability and understanding to make the application, you also need to have confidence that will make any difference and that it will be done,” mentioned Sampson. “It may be that some groups [in society] have less confidence in it making any difference and being heeded than others.”
Exponential info recording
The proliferation of digital applied sciences additionally means the knowledge police can now know and document about an individual “have magnified exponentially”, which Sampson mentioned is occurring “without any real rules or legislation beyond the internal guidelines for retention of data generally, which I’m not sure goes far enough to assuage the concerns”.
From the police perspective, he added that there’s “a great and probably growing anxiety” that, within the retained biometric info, there could also be one thing essential to a case the general public expects to be pursued; which means there could possibly be a backlash (at a time when public confidence in policing has been rocked) if a related biometric document was deleted.
However, he additionally famous that UK police are “operating in a completely uncircumscribed world where we wouldn’t know until someone says they got it wrong”.
In a report that was despatched to the Home Office in November 2022 and printed on February 2023, Sampson referred to as for clear, complete and coherent frameworks to manage police use of AI and biometrics within the UK, noting there was an “explosion of capability in AI-driven biometric surveillance”.
Both Parliament and civil society have repeatedly referred to as for brand new authorized frameworks to manipulate legislation enforcement’s use of biometrics – together with a House of Lords inquiry into police use of superior algorithmic applied sciences; an impartial authorized assessment by Matthew Ryder QC; the UK’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission; and the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, which referred to as for a moratorium on dwell facial recognition way back to July 2019.
However, the federal government maintains that there’s “already a comprehensive framework” in place.
While the UK authorities is but to publish its AI whitepaper, which can formalise its method to regulating the know-how, Sampson advised MPs and Lords it must “understand very clearly all the risks associated” with its deployment, and that human rights needs to be the “highest priority”.
