Peaceful Protests

Lord Strasburger Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Strasburger (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for calling this very important debate and I declare my interest, as recorded in the register, as chair of Big Brother Watch. I thank Madeleine Stone of Big Brother Watch for the excellent briefing that she provided parliamentarians about the UN toolkit that we are debating today. I also thank Professor Peter Fussey for his guidance; he was an important contributor to the UN toolkit.

The very worrying subject of this debate is just part of the Government’s assault on the privacy of ordinary, law-abiding citizens. Another example of the Government’s propensity to spy on us all is their smuggling into the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill a last-minute amendment enabling the Government to snoop on all our bank accounts. The pretext for this suspicionless financial snoopers’ charter is benefit fraud, for which authorities already have ample powers. This would affect every one of us, with our bank accounts being repeatedly scanned on secret criteria, set by the Government, and the banks forced to hand over unlimited amounts of information. This financial snoopers’ charter is not linked to serious crime or to any crime at all. This House must stop it in its tracks.

The trigger for this debate was last month’s publication of the UN toolkit, Human Rights Compliant Uses of Digital Technologies by Law Enforcement for the Facilitation of Peaceful Protests. Protests are important in a democracy, because they empower people who disagree with their Government’s actions. Those citizens may feel isolated and powerless, but public demonstrations show them that they are not alone and that there are thousands who agree with them. Those in power may try to ignore dissent but, if there are enough protesters, the Government will feel the need to come up with reasons why the protesters are wrong. That is when the debate begins, which is good. Protests also provide an essential voice for minority groups, who otherwise would not be heard.

I return to the UN toolkit, which challenges the UK police approach to biometric identification technologies such as facial recognition. It states very clearly:

“Facial recognition technologies and other biometric identification technologies must not be utilised to identify or track individuals peacefully participating in a protest”.


It also states that protests should not be used as a surveillance opportunity, which I and the Liberal Democrats also support. The reason given by the UN is simply that the use of this technology at protests represents a significant threat to the rights to freedom of expression and association. The inevitable “chilling effect” will mean that members of the public are less willing to engage in their right to protest, as they fear the loss of anonymity and possible reprisals, either now or in the future.

This is in line with the 2023 judgment of the European Court of Human Rights that Russia’s use of facial recognition technology to identify protesters was unlawful. Since this ruling, Russia has continued to use the technology to target protesters against the war in Ukraine and those attending the funeral of the political dissident Alexei Navalny.

However, despite the UN and ECHR rulings, police forces in the UK are already using facial recognition technology to monitor and identify peaceful protesters, in a total legislative vacuum. No primary legislation or regulations cover the use or oversight of this technology, so the police are writing their own rules, with no consideration of the human rights of their targets. This is a totally unacceptable state of affairs.

Facial recognition technology is wholly intrusive. It is the equivalent of stamping a barcode on every citizen’s forehead so that they can all be identified from a distance. Less intrusive identification methods, such as using fingerprints or DNA, are heavily prescribed in their use and the retention of their data. But, scandalously, there is nothing to control the use of facial recognition technology, which poses the most serious threat to human rights of all these technologies.

Facial recognition technology was used by police in Cardiff to monitor an entirely peaceful protest. The watch-list fed into the system contained mostly individuals not wanted for any criminal activity. It was just monitoring law-abiding citizens exercising their right to peaceful protest. The Appeal Court found that South Wales Police had unlawfully deployed the technology, but that has not stopped it being used at peaceful protests.

Current police policy, which, in the absence of any legislation, they have written for themselves, covers identifying people who “may cause harm”—whatever that absurdly broad phrase means. It can be used to include just about anybody. This do-it-yourself police guidance sets no criminal threshold for the use of live facial recognition and can be used to justify any kind of use, including surveillance and identification of peaceful protesters.

Amazingly, this is only the second time that facial recognition has been debated in Parliament in the eight years since the police started trialling it. As a result, there is no democratic mandate for the use of this technology. The Science and Technology Committee called for an “immediate moratorium” on its use, which has been ignored. There has been sustained criticism of the legislative vacuum from parliamentarians, academics and rights groups. The independent review commissioned by the Met criticised the force for failing to consider the impact on human rights and relying on an inadequate legal basis. Four Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioners have found that the existing legal position is not fit for purpose.

I have a number of questions for the Minister. If he feels unable to answer them all today, will he write to me and the other speakers in this debate with his answers? How do the Government justify taking the opposite approach to that of our allies and the UN guidance, instead mimicking the Russian police state practice of using facial recognition to identify protestors at peaceful protests? Will the Government commit to complying with the UN toolkit, which prohibits using facial recognition to identify those participating in peaceful protests? How have the Government evaluated the chilling effect on peaceful protests of using facial recognition, including at the Coronation?

Furthermore, what recourse is available to citizens who are wrongly placed on the facial recognition watch-list or are misidentified by the technology? Big Brother Watch has examples of innocent people, including a 14 year-old boy being mistakenly identified as a criminal, with seriously traumatic effects, possibly lifelong. The UN model places a clear responsibility on states to ensure proper oversight of advanced surveillance technologies at protests. With the likely abolition of the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner by the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, who will conduct this oversight?

Lastly, when will the Government wake up from being fast asleep at the wheel on this vital matter and legislate? We need a robust and clear domestic legal framework, governing the use of digital technologies by law enforcement that conforms to international human rights law.