UK ministers have been criticised after again delaying the publication of a official report into police use of facial recognition technology.Ministers now face a parliamentary inquiry over the storing by police of 20 million mugshots – including of many people not convicted of any crime – after a senior MP warned the practice raises “fundamental civil liberty issues”, reported the Independent.Norman Lamb MP, chair of the science and technology committee, said earlier this year that the now five-year delay was “intolerable” as police continued to operate the controversial technology while watchdogs warn that it could potentially be illegal.A Commons committee is poised to launch the probe after running out of patience with the Government, which has failed to act on the controversy almost six years after it was ruled unlawful by the High Court.The court warned of the “risk of stigmatisation of those entitled to the presumption of innocence”, adding that it would be particularly harmful in the cases of children.That figure potentially corresponds to almost a third of the population – and includes the facial images of hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens, despite a High Court ruling in 2012 that said holding these was unlawful.Lamb has told The Independent that his committee is ready to step in and investigate.Condemning the situation as “intolerable”, Mr Lamb said: “There are no real rules surrounding this.”The police can store these facial images without any proper consideration of them, which raises fundamental and significant civil liberty issues about what they are retaining about us.”It includes people who have not been charged with any crime, or people who have been exonerated.”The Government has told the police they do not need to delete these images, despite a High Court ruling in 2012 which said it was unlawful for the police to retain them.At the time, the independent Biometrics Commissioner warned that public confidence in law enforcement was being undermined by the lack of laws controlling the police's use of facial recognition technology, which can identify individuals from live CCTV footage.
UK’s Home Office slammed over ‘intolerable’ face database
