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31 October 2023
A statement addressed by UK parliamentarians coordinated by Statewatch and signed by 14 other civil society organisations from across Europe.
Image: dsleeter_2000, CC BY-NC 2.0
See the news article on this statement: UK participation in “unnecessary” police facial recognition system needs “open, thorough, democratic debate”
The statement is also available as a PDF.
Key points
- The EU plans to expand the ‘Prüm’ police data exchange system, in which the UK participates, to enable the cross-border searching and exchange of facial images, police records and potentially driving licences
- The necessity and proportionality of these changes have not been demonstrated
- The UK joining the expanded system could lead to millions of custody images and police records being made available for searches by police forces in the EU, and recent announcements suggest passport photos may also be made available via Prüm
- The government has previously ignored Parliament’s wishes regarding UK participation in the system
- An open, thorough, democratic debate must be held to ensure that this does not happen again
Background
The Prüm system is a European framework for cross-border police cooperation and information exchange. Under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the UK still participates in the system. The current legislation dates from 2008, and in 2021 the European Commission published a proposal to update and expand the system.
The rules currently deal with cross-border searching and exchange of vehicle registration, fingerprint and DNA data by law enforcement agencies. The updated system (‘Prüm II’) would make it mandatory for participating states to interconnect databases of facial images for cross-border law enforcement searches. It would also provide the option of participating states interconnecting their databases of “police records.”[1]
As the European Scrutiny Committee has noted,[2] civil society organisations – including a number of the signatories to this letter – have expressed serious concerns about the Prüm II proposal, arguing that it “fails to demonstrate the necessity and proportionality of its measures, in particular its vastly expanded categories of personal data.”[3]
Parliamentary scrutiny
Parliament has historically shown deep concern for the civil liberties and human rights implications of the Prüm system. Due to concerns raised by Parliament in 2015 about the transnational searching and exchange of sensitive biometric and other personal data by police forces, the government agreed:
- to exclude from Prüm searches biometric data held by UK authorities on those suspected of committing a criminal offence;
- to only permit searches of data concerning recordable offences; and
- to apply higher forensic science standards in the course of determining matches of DNA and fingerprint data.
Parliament subsequently supported the opt-in.[4]
However, EU institutions and member states continued to seek access to UK data on both convicts and suspects, and in June 2020 the government unilaterally reversed its previous position. Parliament was informed by ministers that its decision was being overturned, and that suspects’ data – specifically, the DNA data of 5.7 million people – would now be made available for Prüm searches.
In response, the European Scrutiny Select Committee said it was “deeply concerned at the Government’s lack of engagement with Parliament during the review process or involvement of Parliament in evaluating and endorsing the outcome of the review and the change in the Government’s policy.”[5] The Committee highlighted in a letter to the then-Security Minister that “more data, with fewer safeguards, will be shared with EU Member States now that the UK has left the EU than was the case when the UK itself was a Member State.”[6]
Prüm II: expanding the system
The Prüm II proposal does little to alleviate such concerns. It substantially expands the types of data that can be searched and exchanged by law enforcement agencies. As noted, the Commission’s proposal covers databases of facial images and gives participating states the option of including “police records,” while the Council of the EU would like to include driving licence databases in the system.[7]
UK custody image retention
The use of facial recognition technology by the police has been repeatedly questioned and criticised by civil society organisations and human rights experts – for example, regarding necessity and proportionality, transparency and accountability, and (in)accuracy and discrimination. The potential establishment of a Europe-wide network of police facial recognition databases only multiplies these concerns. As far as the UK is
