Justice Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Official Report 692KB pdf

Justice Sub-Committee on Policing (Report Back)

Agenda item 7 is feedback from the meeting on 16 January of the Justice Sub-Committee on Policing. I refer members to paper 5, which is a paper by the clerk. Following a verbal report, there will be an opportunity for questions.

The meeting was on 16 January, when we held our third and final evidence session for our inquiry into the use of facial recognition technology by the police service in Scotland. The sub-committee heard from Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority. As the convener said, members have a feedback note on the meeting in their papers.

Police Scotland outlined the process for photographing people at the point of being charged in the custody process, including how those images are uploaded into the Scottish criminal history system and the United Kingdom police national database. It was confirmed that the Scottish criminal history system contains custody images only but that the UK police national database also contains “intelligence images” from a number of sources such as CCTV.

Police Scotland confirmed that it has no plans to test or introduce live facial recognition technology in Scotland at this time. It is aware of the concerns about human rights, privacy and data protection, as well as the issues with the reliability and accuracy of the software, which includes in-built bias.

The witnesses confirmed that the procurement and introduction of any such system in Scotland would require several key elements to be met. Those include a strict necessity test under the general data protection regulations; consideration of proportionality, ethics and protection of human rights; robust assessment of the credibility and reliability of the new technology; and assessment of value for money and business cases for any new technologies.

The witnesses felt that the challenges that facial recognition technology poses for policing should be a matter of priority for a Scottish biometrics commissioner. They also said that they would welcome a legal framework for the use of retrospective and live facial recognition technology, perhaps through amendment of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995.

The Scottish Police Authority spoke of its intention to introduce a more structured approach to the delivery of Police Scotland’s 10-year strategy.

The next meeting of the sub-committee will be on 30 January, when we will consider a draft report of our inquiry.

As members have no questions, we will move into private session.

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 28 January, when we will continue our evidence taking on the Children (Scotland) Bill.