"A new Home Office consultation [PDF] published this week proposes creating a dedicated legal framework to govern live facial recognition and a widening class of "biometric and inferential technologies." Ministers say the current patchwork of common law and data protection rules is too messy to support national deployment and argue police need clearer powers if they are to use the tools "at significantly greater scale.""
"The consultation opens the door to a unified legal regime for biometrics more broadly, aligning facial recognition with tools such as fingerprints and DNA-style evidence. Ministers also point to Metropolitan Police statistics claiming 1,300 arrests over two years linked to facial recognition, including suspected rapists, domestic abusers, and violent offenders, as well as more than 100 registered sex offenders allegedly found breaching license conditions."
Ministers have launched a consultation to create a dedicated legal framework for live facial recognition and a wider class of biometric and inferential technologies to enable national police deployment. The government argues current common law and data protection arrangements are fragmented and inadequate for significantly greater scale. Officials describe facial recognition as the biggest breakthrough for catching criminals since DNA matching and propose aligning facial recognition with other biometrics such as fingerprints and DNA-style evidence. Police cite Metropolitan statistics claiming around 1,300 arrests over two years linked to facial recognition and more than 100 registered sex offenders identified. The Home Office has invested millions in live and national facial-matching systems and plans further funding.
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