Keir Starmer’s digital ID card scheme could be used as a
population-wide facial recognition database for police to check
mugshots, privacy campaigners fear.
A clause included in Labour’s
digital ID consultation could allow police to access facial recognition
and biometric data held by the Government.
The digital ID cards
will include a ‘a current, high-resolution biometric facial image that
meets specified requirements’, the Government announced this week
Documents
published by the Cabinet Office state that ‘there is a legal basis for
police use of facial recognition, which may include access to biometric
data held by government’.
The documents add that under the
Government’s proposals the digital ID cards will be subject to existing
and any new legal frameworks ‘for using facial recognition in law
enforcement’.
Jasleen Chaggar, from civil liberties group Big
Brother Watch, said: ‘Snuck into the consultation is an admission that
the police would be allowed to repurpose our digital ID photos as
mugshots to create a population-wide facial recognition database.
‘It
is for precisely this reason that the public is rightly sceptical of a
sprawling ID system that has been sold to us under various guises -
whether to “stop the boats” or improve public services - but which
invariably hands more power and more of our personal information to the
state, at our expense.’
She added: ‘Given the public backlash,
high costs, serious data risks and likelihood that this could become a
mandatory scheme in practice, the government should drop this digital ID
disaster altogether.’...<<<Read More>>>...
