Scottish Police admit to use of facial recognition software

Police maintain a database of pics of those in custody and use software to automatically match them with CCTV footage

Police Scotland has admitted using controversial face recognition technology to identify individuals from CCTV cameras and other sources, as well as maintaining a database of photographs as source for the practice.

According to a report by Glasgow's Evening Times, in a statement resulting from a freedom of information (FoI) request, Police Scotland has confirmed using the technology 440 times, as well as maintaining a special database of 334,000 photographs taken of people in custody to feed into the system.

The force defended its use of facial recognition technology.

"Police Scotland has been using facial searching functionality on the Police National Database since 2014," said DCI Russell Penman of Police Scotland's Specialist Crime Division.

He added: "Facial search is an intelligence tool that can be used for intelligence development purposes. It is not used for formal photographic identification procedures, although it does provide intelligence around the suspected identity of an individual whose image has been taken and searched."

However the revelations have alarmed civil liberties campaigners.

"Without adequate safeguards, there is nothing to stop the police using from using this technology for mass surveillance," said the Scottish Liberal Democrats' justice spokeswoman Alison McInnes, who initiated the FoI request.

While the police say photos are removed from the special database once proceedings are dropped or the suspect is found not guilty, McInnes said the practice raises serious questions as to how images of citizens will be used in conjunction with facial recognition software in the future.

"The combination of this database with the new facial recognition software has triggered concerns about the protection of our civil liberties," she said.

"It could be used to identify protestors at political events or football fans, stifling freedom of speech. I also have real concerns that the privacy of innocent people could be compromised and they could be exposed to the risk of false identification."

There is worry in Scotland, as elsewhere, about the cross-matching of personal data by the authorities that would be unduly intrusive into their private affairs. The National Police Database contains 18 million photographs of citizens and there are concerns that these might ultimately be fed into a facial recognition database.

In addition The SNPs plans to create a "super database" that would capture and store data about Scottish citizens' health, and share it with other government bodies, has been criticised by privacy campaigners who believe the system could be a ploy to sneak in a national ID scheme through the back door, as Computing reported in March.