Fears Keir Starmer’s digital ID playing cards could possibly be used as population-wide facial recognition database for police mugshots
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.’
Digital ID will first be used to carry out digital right-to-work checks, but ministers envision this expanding to include things like childcare, tax, registering a marriage, and even telling people when to take their bins out
A clause included in Labour’s digital ID consultation could allow police to access facial recognition and biometric data held by the Government
On Tuesday Labour unveiled its prototype digital ID system as it laid out further details on what the scheme could look like in its push to create ‘Government by app’.
The digital ID will first be used to carry out digital right-to-work checks, but ministers envision this expanding to include things like childcare, tax, national insurance and even registering a marriage.
Under Labour’s proposals, the digital ID app could expand to make it easier to claim benefits and even tell people when to put their bins out.
The Government has launched an eight-week public consultation and subsequent ‘people’s panel’ on plans to launch a digital ID, as it tries to curry favour for its controversial scheme.
The consultation period is due to end in June and ministers then plan to bring legislation before MPs, with the digital ID app expected to be running by the end of this parliament.
Ministers have stressed that digital IDs will not be mandatory, and when the legislation is brought before parliament ‘it will say this on the face of the Bill’.
And Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, has insisted that the digital ID scheme is ‘not about’ law enforcement but is designed to improve interactions with public services.
Mr Jones, who is in charge of the project, told a press conference: ‘The digital ID system that we’re building is not a mandatory ID that you need to have available to show to the police or anybody else. If you wish to use it, you can, but you don’t have to if you do want to.
‘So any concerns the public have about how this interfaces with law enforcement, please be reassured that’s not what this is about. This is about making customer services easier to access and use across government.’
