Statement to the 2019 annual report from the Biometrics Commissioner, Paul Wiles
Published 2 July 2020
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My annual report that is published today was written before the Covid pandemic and because of the delay in publishing the report it is in some respects dated, given the dramatic changes necessitated by the crisis and now required for the recovery.
The global experience of the pandemic has demonstrated several things. That biometrics and allied technologies will be central in our future lives. That these new technologies can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of many services. That new biometrics will be important to future policing and other mechanisms of social control.
The technology changes can be used to enshrine liberty and protect our private life but alternatively can be used for mass surveillance and the subjugation of the individual to state power. Globally we have seen both these possibilities during the pandemic.
As always powerful new technologies will require strategic political choices to be made by all countries about how they will be used. Our democratic tradition will require a system of legal governance for how we develop, use and benefit from biometrics in the public interest across the public and private sectors. This will be especially important for policing in order to uphold our tradition of policing by consent and maintain public trust. The need for that new governance is urgent both to control the use of biometrics in the public interest but equally to provide a clear framework to encourage the investment that is needed in the new technologies to help re-build our economy and social fabric.
My term of office as Biometrics Commissioner should have ended in mid-June but I have agreed to stay on until the end of the year so my role can be advertised, and a replacement appointed.