At its yearly gathering, the governing party north of the border has greenlit a proposal that, unless primary legislation is passed, it will formally oppose police use of automated tech
At its annual conference, the Scottish National Party has passed a resolution opposing the implementation of live facial recognition technology by Police Scotland without new laws governing the use of the technology.
The resolution, brought forward by party member Erin Lux, proposed that, absent new primary legislation introduced by the Scottish Government to regulate the use of the automated tech, the SNP should oppose the implementation of live facial recognition (LFR) systems
“Live facial recognition effectively turns your face into a mandatory ID card,” said Lux. “All of this without so much as a debate in parliament. We only have to look south of the border to see what happens when these technologies are introduced by the back door without regulation, as they have been in England and Wales since 2016.”
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She added: “We have also seen the bias in how they choose to use this technology. So, outside the Notting Hill Carnival but not at the Tommy Robinson rallies. If we don’t act, that could happen here.”
Police Scotland tried to implement LFR technology in 2020 but paused its deployment plans after strong criticism from the public and the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Sub-Committee on Policing.
“This technology is glitchy and prone to false positives,” said Stephanie Melnick, who seconded the resolution. “But even if it worked perfectly as it is, at its core it is the tool of an authoritarian surveillance state.”
Deployments of the LFR by law enforcement in England and Wales use specialist cameras to scan faces. The images gather are then compared against authorities’ databases and watchlists. Biometric data captured is typically stored where a match is immediately but, according to police, otherwise deleted.
