UK lawmakers say live facial recognition lacks a legal basis
- Reference: 1706618392
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/01/30/uk_law_makers_say_live/
- Source link:
The House of Lords' Justice and Home Affairs Committee told the Conservative member of parliament that Live Facial Recognition technology (LFR) — which compares a live camera feed of faces against a predetermined watchlist — has no clear legal foundation. There are no rigorous standards or systems of regulation to govern LFR, and there is no consistency in approaches to training in its use by police forces, the Lords added.
Baroness Hamwee, chair of the Committee, [1]asked : "Does the use of LFR have a basis in law? Is it actually legal?"
[2]
She added: "It is essential that the public trusts LFR and how it is used. It is fundamental that the legal basis is clear. Current regulation is not sufficient. Oversight is inadequate. Technology is developing so fast that regulation must be future-proofed."
[3]
[4]
She said the UK was an "outlier" among democracies in terms of the speed at which it was applying LFR.
"We question why there is such disparity between the approach in England and Wales and other democratic states in the regulation of LFR," Baroness Hamwee said.
[5]
The committee's letter addressed to the Home Secretary says: "Police forces may soon be able to link LFR cameras to trawl large populations, such as Greater London and not just specific localities. There is nothing to regulate this. The public need to be aware of this potential and for there to be an informed scrutiny by Parliament of the risks and benefits."
The Committee calls for a clear legal foundation for using LFR, a framework for regulating the deployment of the technology and independent scrutiny of these processes.
The Lords said LFR may be a valuable in policing, but added it was "deeply concerned" that its use was being expanded without proper scrutiny and accountability.
[6]
The Committee's letter followed [7]a report from June 2022 , which said that "without sufficient safeguards, supervision, and caution, advanced technologies may have a chilling effect on a range of human rights, undermine the fairness of trials, weaken the rule of law, further exacerbate existing inequalities, and fail to produce the promised effectiveness and efficiency gains."
In its letter, the group said it was "disheartened" by the government's response to the earlier report.
UK's biometrics and surveillance commissioner [8]has also highlighted failings in the Home Office's approach to governing the technology , saying the Whitehall department had failed to offer the support required to carry out his duties.
Dr Fraser Sampson's role is set to be taken over by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office (IPCO) once the Data Protection and Digital Information (DPDI) Bill comes into force this spring. Sampson has [9]voiced concern the bill will wipe out oversight of facial recog in the country.
[10]UK biometrics boss bows out, bemoaning bureaucratic blunders
[11]UK policing minister urges doubling down on face-scanning tech
[12]UK's GDPR replacement could wipe out oversight of live facial recognition
[13]Brexit dividend? 'Newly independent' UK will be world's 'data hub', claims digital minister
Nonetheless, last year, the UK minister for policing called for forces to double their use of algorithmic-assisted facial recognition in a bid to snare more criminals.
Chris Philp MP, Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Fire, [14]said both the use of live and retrospective facial recognition should increase following a commitment to spend £17.5 million ($21.3 million) on "a resilient and highly accurate system" to search all databases of images the police can access. ®
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[1] https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/519/justice-and-home-affairs-committee/news/199624/lords-committee-questions-legality-of-live-facial-recognition-technology/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZbkrOE-sXZ8HhC9tuKBsnwAAAZU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZbkrOE-sXZ8HhC9tuKBsnwAAAZU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZbkrOE-sXZ8HhC9tuKBsnwAAAZU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZbkrOE-sXZ8HhC9tuKBsnwAAAZU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZbkrOE-sXZ8HhC9tuKBsnwAAAZU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/9453/documents/163029/default/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/30/surveillance_commissioner_final_report/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/19/dpib_2_surveillance_oversight/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/30/surveillance_commissioner_final_report/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/31/uk_police_minister_lfr/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/19/dpib_2_surveillance_oversight/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/06/new_dcms_head_newly_independent/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/31/uk_police_minister_lfr/
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: "Does the use of LFR have a basis in law?"
@AC
"After all, Rwanda will soon legally be a safe country for refugees regardless of any facts."
Economic migrants
Re: "Does the use of LFR have a basis in law?"
FYI not a downvoter. I dont see anything particularly wrong in your comment bar that one fix
I can be confident
That any recommendations will be ignored but police forces in England and the government. Other findings of unlawful behaviour in this area have been.
Ignored not just by police forces
Private companies have been building (and sharing) LFR databases for years. And in those cases it's not just those on predefined watch lists who are tracked, it's anyone and everyone.
Ban it 'til it works
LFR use anywhere should be banned until it is 6-sigma accurate, doesn't have any baises (racial, women etc,), and is not affected by variations in lighting and weather. Can't do that? Get lost.
Cops and spooks don't care about any of this, however. They'll happily ignore any such mandates and carry on as usual.
Re: Ban it 'til it works
The rich can ensure their faces are excluded from any training data. Given that they typically eat well, have good routines and magnitude lower levels of stress their faces significantly differ from the rest. You can tell easily when looking at someone that they are wealthy (with some exceptions).
So it is given that such system will have a bias in that area.
Rich people pay good money so that none of their photos are ever available on the internet and if something pops up their agents are on it in an instant.
Re: Ban it 'til it works
The big problem isn't that your pic appears in the data. It is that the pic of someone who is not you but looks a bit like you is in the data.
In that case, however innocent (or rich) you are you will be stopped at every street corner. Forever.
And one day you will lose the dice throw and will be imprisoned for someone else's crime. Unless you are in the USA in which case you will just be shot by mistake, or while resisting arrest by trying to explain you are the wrong guy.
Re: Ban it 'til it works
That is my point. If it was not trained on the rich, if the rich person's photo that will be given to the network to find in the crowd will more likely match with a face it has been trained on or give some unpredictable result. It will have lower chance of finding the rich person.
So someone will definitely be stopped at every street corner.
The AI will be blind to rich people.
As if it matters
Britain is an exceptionally poor example of a democracy. It has always been so. The great unwashed ruled by the people who always seem to be in power.
Lawless
You need to remember that laws in the UK are for little people.
Discussion is seemingly designed to distract from the main point:
Who won the tender if there was one and why this has even been commissioned without any legal basis.
Given that the country is run on brown envelopes, we probably know the answer.
What are people worried about?
'... "a resilient and highly accurate system" to search all databases of images the police can access.'
The great bastion of democracy, China, has been doing this successfully for ages with no issues so why shouldn't we? I'm sure Hikvision have a few camera systems they can sell off cheaply.
Re: What are people worried about?
reporter> How do you find all the mass surveillance?
Chinese person> I can't complaint actually!
"Does the use of LFR have a basis in law?"
Maybe not yet but that's easy to fix without making waves or incurring costs. After all, Rwanda will soon legally be a safe country for refugees regardless of any facts.