The UK’s biometrics commissioner has issued his first annual report, and it raises some concerns about how the state handles biometric information relating to criminals, according to an article by Alan Travis in The Guardian. The commissioner, Alastair MacGregor, suggests that legal restrictions on the police’s ability to keep biometric data on foreign nationals prohibit them from effective policing.
In 2012, a law was passed in the UK to protect British citizens’ biometric data. Called the Protection of Freedoms Act, it ensured that police would destroy the biometric records of individuals who had been arrested but not charged. Unfortunately, this legislation also prevented the police from keeping the biometric information of convicted criminals from outside of the country, so in some cases police have been prohibited from retaining valuable information about legitimate criminal threats.
Responding to the report, a spokesman for the Home Office suggested that if police believe an individual to be a serious threat to public safety, they are still able “to take and keep DNA and fingerprints from any EU national living in the UK,” and noted that Britain “requests and uses more data about foreign offenders than almost any other country.”
The tension echoes similar public debates on the use of national biometric registries in countries like Australia, and law enforcement’s use of body cameras in North America. It’s an interesting tug-of-war that will likely play out in various other forms in various other countries as the presence of biometric technology continues to increase.
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December 17, 2014 – by Alex Perala
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