UK revisits proposal to make a ‘vast police database’ from driving licenses

The UK government is advancing a Crime and Policing Bill that could have a significant impact on British society as it seeks to introduce new laws and policing powers.

The new crime bill, introduced by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, is currently in its second reading, and has come under fire for its potential expansion of facial recognition powers. The bill is seen as the biggest legislative update to policing in the UK in decades and is designed to tackle anti-social crimes and street crimes.

A clause in the bill gives police the green light to run facial recognition searches on the national database of 50 million driving licenses. The plan was introduced by the previous Conservative government, in a 2023 criminal justice bill, and has come under fresh criticism following the new Labour government’s proposed bill.

“It’s disturbing to see the Government is reheating the Conservative’s abandoned plans to grant all police forces access to our driving license photos, opening the door to the creation of a massive facial recognition database,” says Madeleine Stone, senior advocacy officer at Big Brother Watch.

“More than 50 million Britons hold driving licenses in order to travel and have not given permission for the Government to turn out photos into mugshots,” Stone continues. “The Bill allows the Government to grant police officers extraordinary powers to identify and track anyone with a driving license, at the click of a button.”

Calling it an “unprecedented breach of privacy,” and risking misidentification and injustice, Big Brother Watch is referring specifically to Clause 95 of the Crime and Policing Bill. This would allow all police forces, the National Crime Agency (NCA), and the Independent Office for Police Conduct access to “driving license information” for “policing or law enforcement.” This would include images of faces, which could be used for 1:N facial recognition matching by police or the NCA.

It also comes as the UK’s law enforcement agencies are seeking live facial recognition (LFR) suppliers. The tender – worth up to £20 million ($25.3 million) – was issued several weeks ago, by the British government, and is part of an effort to establish a national multi-supplier framework for the biometric technology. The facial recognition software will compare live camera feeds of faces against watchlists to locate persons of interest. The duration of the contract is 48 months.

On the government’s part, the Home Secretary said the new bill is aimed at reinstalling public confidence in the police. “For too long communities have had to put up with rising town centre and street crime, and persistent antisocial behaviour, while neighbourhood police have been cut,” Cooper said.

Critics, however, believe the clause could be a stealth move to introduce facial recognition for policing. “Privacy safeguards are urgently needed, and the Government must abandon any plans to subvert our driving licenses into a vast police database,” Stone urged.

To be enacted in law, the new bill, which received its first reading in Parliament on Tuesday in the House of Commons, must progress to the House of Lords for three stages of reading before receiving Royal Assent.

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  biometric matching  |  biometrics  |  driver's license  |  identity document  |  law enforcement  |  legislation  |  UK