Security and Policing: Facial Recognition Technology

Lord Evans of Weardale Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Evans of Weardale (CB)]

My Lords, I join in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on this debate and draw attention to my interest, as declared in the register, as an adviser to Facewatch Ltd.

I think we would be making a mistake if we were to overemphasise the risks of this technology, given that it provides so many opportunities. Like the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, I was an official in the Home Office in the 1990s, albeit at a much more junior level, and was responsible for VIP protection policy. In that context, I was continually bombarded by supposed facial recognition companies about the value of their products. Broadly speaking, they did not work. However, today the situation has changed: these systems are starting to work and the pace of development, particularly of data analytics and machine learning, means that they will get better quickly over the coming period. As a result, the sort of criticisms we have seen from Big Brother Watch, including that they do not work, may or may not be true today, but I am confident that they will not be true within the next few years.

By way of anecdote, I was going into a building the other day. There was a facial recognition system at the door, which immediately and accurately identified me, and was able to do it on the basis of a 12 year-old photograph taken from the internet. This is not just about police custody records: you can do it without any of that stuff, and a lot of people are doing so in the private sector. We are moving from promise to reality, and I suspect that within a few years, facial recognition systems—of course there are a lot of different technologies here—will probably be better at identifying individual human faces than we are ourselves, and we would be foolish in my view to deny ourselves the potential benefits of that technology.

I draw attention particularly to the opportunities in counterterrorism here, given my own background. Your Lordships only need to imagine the value of being able to confidently identify individuals checking in for airline flights, for instance, irrespective of what particular documentation they happen to be using on that day or what identity they might have been using. I can remember in my previous career watching individuals applying for asylum who found that their asylum application was turned down and therefore went on to their second or third application using different identities. We are in a position potentially to get over those sorts of problems using this technology.

The opportunities for identifying hostile reconnaissance activity are also very important. The attacks that we saw last year at London Bridge and Borough Market were very likely preceded by reconnaissance activity. One can envisage facial recognition technology being able to identify that in advance and enable pre-emptive action to be taken. Particularly on the terrorism side, we already know the faces of most of those who would like to attack us. We have them on record, so to be able to identify their hostile activities in advance is a very valuable intelligence tool. I am talking here about using it for intelligence purposes rather than evidential purposes, although it may be that we will come on to that once appropriate procedures and standards have been installed.

In regard to everyday crime, this also offers us real opportunities. Given the pressure on police budgets, we should welcome anything that makes policing more effective and efficient, rather than viewing it with deep suspicion. The same applies to potential victims: transport operators, shopkeepers and entertainment providers should be able to use this technology to protect themselves, their businesses and their clients. This will, in my view, add to the public good.

I look forward to clarity from the Home Office on its biometrics strategy, but I very much hope that it draws an appropriate balance, which encourages the use of facial recognition technology for the public good while providing a proportionate degree of regulation over it. We should not smother innovation, and it is important that any oversight or accountability mechanism for this does not become too bureaucratic or process heavy in such a way as to provide a disincentive to use the systems. It is also important that this should not become a bonanza for the lawyers.