Government plans to make the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) responsible for monitoring the use of biometric and DNA data by the police are “ill-conceived”—we think that means “nuts”, according to the UK’s biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner.
Fraser Sampson has the job of making sure that that the police collect, retain and use a range of biometric material, including digital facial images, as surveillance camera commissioner his job is to get the cops to comply with the surveillance camera code of practice.
Sampson was appointed to the dual position in March 2021, after the UK Ministry of the Interior announced in July 2020 that it would be amalgamating the roles to make the stand alone statutory functions of each office the responsibility of a single individual.
But the idea of further amalgamating the roles under the purview of the ICO is the brilliant plan of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) which has currently put the idea out to consultation.
But by “consultation” the government meant not telling anyone about it because it clean forgot to mention it to the bloke who was most affected.
Sampson said he was never made aware of it through official channels, and that it was only brought to his attention in private conversations.
In his official response to the consultation, Sampson said that to even propose the absorption of these functions by the ICO “is to misunderstand the realities of those functions”.
While both roles involve oversight of lawful data processing, including the retention and sharing of some highly sensitive personal data, both of their discrete functions go far beyond data protection, he said. “There is an elemental difference between general data management principles and intrusive state surveillance; there are also fundamental considerations in this area that are not data protection issues at all.”
Privacy campaigners say the government’s updated surveillance camera code of practice does not do enough to prevent abuses of facial recognition technology.
Sampson added that although his surveillance camera role does have a regulatory element, in that he must monitor and encourage compliance with the Home Secretary’s Surveillance Camera Code of Practice, the UK Biometrics Commissioner is by contrast not a regulator at all, meaning its absorption by the ICO would create a conflict of interest. In other words, it’s nuts bananas.
“The principal functions of the Biometrics Commissioner are quasi-judicial in nature and are exercised in the setting of policing, counter-terrorism and national security”, he said. “To characterise them as upholding information rights is to miss this fundamental point and their absorption would introduce a UK regulator to this area and then require that regulator to take on non-regulatory judicial functions.
“In the setting of those functions there may also be an inherent conflict for the ICO as they will find themselves participating in decisions to authorise police retention of biometrics which are later challenged by the individual who would not then be able to turn to them as the nation’s regulator upholding their information rights at large.”
So that’s clear as transparent mud, then.
