Facial Recognition Technology

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The Government do not intend to place a moratorium on the technology’s use, but the noble Lord is right that such use needs to be carefully governed and be in line with the law and human rights, and with a clear oversight framework. Use of the technology in the private sector—the noble Lord might have alluded to this—is currently being looked at by the ICO.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)]

Will the Minister consider the utter incompetence of the private and public companies which create facial recognition technology? You have these machines and you pay a vast sum of money for them, but when you put your face on them, they cannot recognise you for anything. Is it not better to press for the improvement of the system rather than trying to clamp down on something that is in no way ready to be used properly yet?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I hate to differ on this with my noble friend, but e-gate technology is in fact superb at matching facial recognition to passports—in some cases, better than humans. However, the human eye in these things is of course not to be dismissed and it can detect all sorts of other things in terms of e-gates.