Metropolitan Police: Live Facial Recognition Debate
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Lord Anderson of Ipswich
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Metropolitan Police: Live Facial Recognition
Lord Anderson of Ipswich Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
My Lords, in her annual report of 25 February, the Forensic Science Regulator described the biometric oversight board, relied on in the High Court judgment that the Minister mentioned, as having made
“no substantive progress towards establishing an effective governance and oversight framework for police use of facial recognition or other biometrics.”
The role of the Surveillance Camera Commissioner is coming to an end in June, with no future plans announced. There is, to coin a phrase, a question of trust. Does the Minister agree that overt surveillance and biometric uses such as live facial recognition need to be properly regulated by statute, or at least until then by a revised code, and that the office of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner would be the appropriate body to take this on?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
As the noble Lord will know, we engage with both the ICO and the Surveillance Camera Commissioner. I totally get his point about the term of office being up in June and I know that we will have further discussions about how best to deploy the governance of this very exciting but potentially risky technology.