By The Guardian
Published on January 11, 2024
When you send off your details and photo to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) for your first driving licence, you’re probably thinking about being able to do things like taking friends on a road trip, dropping the kids off to school or helping elderly relatives get around. Few of us, I imagine, are willingly signing up to join a massive police lineup.
But that’s what new powers that the government is trying to sneak through in the new criminal justice bill mean. The measures – not referred to explicitly in the bill – will allow the police to run facial recognition searches on a database containing 50 million UK driving licence holders, to compare the biometric data contained in their photographs with images captured by CCTV or on social media. This new sweeping power should worry anyone who cares about the fundamental rights to privacy and free expression.