Policing minister wants to use UK passport data in facial recognition

Policing minister Chris Philp has outlined his intention to give police forces access to the UK’s passport database, claiming it will enhance their facial-recognition capabilities to help catch shoplifters and other criminals.

Speaking at a fringe event of the Conservative Party Conference, Philp told attendees that he plans to integrate data from the police national database (PND), the Passport Office and other national databases to help police find a match with the “click of one button”.

“I’m going to be asking police forces to search all of those databases – the police national database, which has custody images, but also other databases like the passport database – not just for shoplifting, but for crime generally, to get those matches, because the technology is now so good that you can get a blurred image and get a match for it,” he said.

“Operationally, I’m asking them to do it now. In the medium term, by which I mean the next two years, we’re going to try to create a new data platform so you can press one button [and it] lets you search it all in one go.”

Philp added that police forces should search each database separately until the new platform is up and running.

According to the 2021 census, just over 86% of the British public hold at least one passport.

In 2012, a High Court ruling specifically found the retention of custody images in the PND to be unlawful on the basis that information about unconvicted people was being treated in the same way as information about people who were ultimately convicted, and that the six-year retention period was disproportionate.

Speaking to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) in February 2023, the biometric and surveillance camera commissioner for England and Wales, Fraser Sampson, said: “I’m here today saying there are probably several million of those records still,” adding that the response from policing bodies and the Home Office (which owns most of the biometric database used by UK police) is to point out the information is held on a database with no bulk deletion capability.

“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.”

Responding to questions from Computer Weekly about whether Philp’s comments were official policy or something he was saying in a personal capacity, a Home Office spokesperson said: “The government is committed to making sure the police have the tools and technology they need to solve and prevent crimes, bring offenders to justice and keep people safe.

“Technology such as facial recognition can help the police quickly and accurately identify those wanted for serious crimes, as well as missing or vulnerable people,” they said. “It also frees up police time and resources, meaning more officers can be out on the beat, engaging with communities and carrying out complex investigations.

“We are working with policing to enable seamless searching of relevant images where it is necessary and proportionate for them to do so to investigate crime and protect the public.”

In response to Philp’s comments, Sampson told the BBC it’s important for police to avoid giving people the impression they’re on a “digital lineup”.

“The state has large collections of good-quality photographs of a significant proportion of the population – drivers and passport holders being good examples – which were originally required and given as a condition of, say, driving and international travel,” he said.

“If the state routinely runs every photograph against every picture of every suspected incident of crime simply because it can, there is a significant risk of disproportionality and of damaging public trust.”

Speaking with Computer Weekly, he added that one significant risk from large, state-operated databases lies in the aggregated effect of having pulled so much information into one place.

“Once you add information from all government databases, such as driver and vehicle licensing, and Automatic Number Plate Recognition logging vehicle registration numbers and movements, you have a hugely intrusive and sprawling visibility of citizens the vast majority of whom are beyond any reasonable suspicion,” he said. “If anyone still believes the adage that ‘if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve nothing to worry about’, they have completely misunderstood the issue.”