Millions on police picture database may be innocent
MORE than 16 million images of people who may have committed no crime have been added to a national police gallery which uses sophisticated facial recognition software, it has emerged.
And the number added to the gallery has continued to grow despite privacy warnings from the courts, a House of Commons Select Committee and a police watchdog.
But the Home Office is sitting on the conclusions of an inquiry into police use of personal images, even though it received the findings at least seven months ago – when Theresa May, now Prime Minister, was Home Secretary.
MP Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East and Labour’s Deputy Leader, said: “The fact police have assembled a photographic database of many millions of people, the overwhelming majority of whom have never and will never commit a crime, should alarm us all.”
The national police database, accessible by forces across the country, has more than 19 million “custody images” of people who have come into contact with police – and millions of these have also been added to a gallery allowing them to be used by facial recognition software.
This could allow police to identify people from images taken from CCTV footage or recorded by cameras on their uniforms.
But there are warnings that the technology is untested and the privacy implications are unclear.
Concerns were first raised after the High Court ruled in 2012 that the policy of the Metropolitan Police of retaining photographs of suspects was unlawful under the Human Rights Act.
It said the force should review its policy of routinely storing photos of suspects even if they were never charged or had been acquitted of any offence.
But in 2014 police began using automated facial recognition technology on images stored on the Police National Database, accessible to all forces.
Biometrics commissioner Alastair MacGregor said in a 2014 report : “A searchable police database of facial images arguably represents a much greater threat to individual privacy than searchable databases of DNA profiles or fingerprints.”