Keir Starmer to ‘turn UK into an open prison’ with facial recognition matched to passports
Imagine every village, town, city in Britain, where each step you take is watched, every face you pass is scanned and matched with passport photos, always
Police across Britain could be granted access to the national passport database (Image: Getty)
Police across Britain could be granted access to the national passport database as part of a wide-ranging plan to expand facial recognition technology in every city, town and village, reports The Telegraph.
Under Labour’s proposals, officers would be able to match images of suspects caught on CCTV, doorbell cameras and dashcams with photographs contained in government databases, including the 45 million passport records held by the state, as well as immigration files.
The plans were set out in a Home Office consultation launched on Thursday, aimed at building a legal framework that allows all police forces to use facial recognition to track down wanted individuals and crime suspects.
Push for ‘live’ facial recognition on the streets
The move comes as ministers encourage a broader rollout of “live” facial recognition cameras in crime hotspots across England and Wales. These devices scan crowds in real time and flag anyone who appears on watchlists.
The framework may later extend to other public authorities and even private firms, such as retailers, giving them access to the technology under regulated conditions.
Civil rights groups say the expansion would mark a serious shift in surveillance powers, describing it as a step toward “historic breaches of Britons’ privacy.”
Currently, police have only restricted access to the passport database. The consultation will set out when officers may view these images, in what situations, and for which types of investigations.
Minister calls technology the biggest breakthrough since DNA
In an interview with The Telegraph, policing minister Sarah Jones championed the systems, calling them the “biggest breakthrough since DNA matching” and claiming they had already “taken thousands of dangerous criminals off our streets”.
“I certainly want to see this significantly increased. It’s very effective for policing,” she said.
“I want it as one of the tools that are available to the police. That’s why we want to have some proper parameters so it’s really clear where it can be useful, so that it can be used more widely.”
On privacy concerns, she added: “We need to be really clear what we are using this technology for as we go forward, because the police are not like other organisations, they have very significant powers and we need to make sure those powers are used in the right way.”
Warning UK risks becoming an ‘open prison’
Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, said the proposals would effectively turn Britain into an “open prison” and warned that passport photos would become “mugshots for a giant surveillance database, putting the British public at risk of misidentifications and injustice”.
“Every search through this harvest of our personal photos puts millions of innocent citizens through a police line-up without our knowledge or consent. Sir Keir Starmer’s Government is committing to historic breaches of Britons’ privacy that you might expect to see in China but not in a democracy,” she said.
