At a time when biometric technologies are being developed more rapidly than government laws designed to guide its use, police forces in Great Britain are using the technology without legal guidance. This is stirring fears that the use of automated facial recognition to identify people in crowds and from CCTV footage is illegal surveillance. And it can take up to five years for the government to develop guidance.
“Technical development and deployment is running ahead of legislation, which is why the Home Office’s promised biometric strategy is urgently needed,” biometrics commissioner Professor Paul Wiles said.
“Biometrics are any measurable biological feature which can be used to [identify] individuals, including the shape of people’s fingerprints and the code of their DNA. Scientific advancements mean that computers can now also differentiate the unique qualities in people’s voices, their irises, their faces and even their gait.
“There is a ‘worrying vacuum’ of regulation covering how police are using new technologies to identify members of the public,” Professor Wiles warned.
The recently released commissioner’s annual report for 2017 says that although police are “largely compliant” with the laws governing the retention of DNA and fingerprints, the quality of this legislation is lacking.
In spite of a High Court ruling that it was illegal to permanently hold facial images of Britons who had never been charged or convicted of a crime, there are millions of images on the Police National Database, hundreds of thousands of which are innocent people.
And the Home Office is developing new databases to centralize the data it holds on the public. The Home Office is not providing the oversight needed to make sure that the data is handled properly.
“Biometrics are beginning to play an integral role in our day to day lives, as a method of keeping our identity and data secure and as a way of law enforcement picking us out of a crowd,” said Renate Samson, data and privacy consultant. The government has for years failed to provide a legal framework for the use of biometrics as technologies have rapidly advanced.
Surveillance and biometric identity is a powerful tool of control. It will one day soon likely be used to marginalize those who refuse to obey man-made worship laws. It is easy to see how biometrics can be used to prevent God’s people from buying and selling.
“And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” Revelation 13:15-17.