The Era of Mass Surveillance Has Arrived
- Philip James
- Apr 2
- 3 min read
Telegraph reveals true extent of facial recognition surveillance by Police in Britain.
Police have been told to use facial recognition searches in every criminal investigation, The Telegraph reveals. The independent police inspectorate has urged forces to “fully exploit” the technology after finding that some were using it more than others. a Telegraph investigation reveals the true scale of police use of facial recognition, with forces conducting searches on the public every two minutes.
The Telegraph reports:
Officers are encouraged to obtain pictures of their targets, including witnesses and victims, from social media, doorbell footage and CCTV, and search them against the vast police national database (PND).
Police could be able to check driving licence photographs in future under plans to give police access to DVLA information, although the Home Office says it is not changing the law for that purpose.
Facial recognition technology is not subject to national guidance from either the Home Office or the College of Policing, which provides advice to police on conducting investigations. The technology, introduced to catch serious and violent offenders, is now most often used for low-level investigations. The reliance on digital technology has increased as police forces across the country cut officer numbers to reduce costs.
His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services (HMIFRS) praised those forces that carried out the most searches in a recent report, and recommended that no investigation should be closed until all images had been cross-checked against available databases.
The inspectors’ most recent report said that by June, forces should introduce a new rule “stating that when an image exists, investigators should search it against the PND and any other relevant databases before their force closes an investigation”.
Forces can adopt the recommendations at their discretion. The unprecedented use of facial recognition will be welcomed by some as a way of reducing time-consuming investigations, but privacy concerns have prompted MPs, regulators and civil liberties campaigners to urge the Government to impose new rules regulating its use by police.
The Telegraph found that one force, Essex Police, used the technology for 16 investigations into what were later determined to be “non-crime”. The force said it had used facial recognition for investigations that concluded that no crime had been committed.
Essex Police was criticised last year over its investigation into Allison Pearson, a Telegraph columnist, for remarks she posted online. The investigation was later dropped.
Last year, officers ran more than a quarter of a million “retrospective” facial recognition searches in the UK, including 30,000 by the Metropolitan Police alone – more than ten times the Met’s figure for 2019.
Retrospective facial recognition can use images obtained from a range of sources, including CCTV, mobile phone footage, dashcam or doorbell cameras or social media. Police obtain the images during their investigations and then run them against a vast police database to look for a possible match.
Billions of records available to police
They can then approach the individual, without revealing that their image has been searched to find a biometric “match”. Home Office officials describe facial recognition as a “key tool” for the police to identify suspects more quickly and accurately. The main resource available to forces is the PND, which collates records from 55 different agencies and holds 6.2 billion searchable records as well as millions of photographs and images.
Police are already allowed to search the passport database, but are required to ask for permission from the Government each time. While live facial recognition cameras on British high streets have generated controversy, retrospective searches are far more commonplace and useful to police. Some forces, including the Met, have bought private facial recognition software from the US to run more accurate searches.
Although facial recognition was first billed as a tool to catch serious offenders, including murderers and terrorists, data obtained under freedom of information laws by The Telegraph and Big Brother Watch shows it is now used to track anti-social behaviour, fly-tipping and mail theft.
Two forces – Humberside and Dyfed-Powys – said they had used the technology for “level one” intelligence gathering by local policing. Most forces refused to reveal a detailed breakdown of how they had used the tool.
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