Correspondence

Letter from the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner to the Security Minister

Published 14 November 2022

2 November 2022

Dear Minister

Government Task Force Protecting Democratic Society

May I offer my sincere congratulations to you in your new role and welcome the substantial addition that I believe it will bring to some of the key areas of public space surveillance about which, as you will be aware from correspondence between our respective offices, I have been concerned since beginning my appointment last year.

State-Controlled Surveillance Companies

The role of state-controlled surveillance companies whose products are now deeply embedded in almost every aspect of our lives, not only within our ‘relevant authorities’ for which I have responsibility (policing bodies and local authorities), but across our critical national infrastructure more widely was highlighted in the report published under your chairmanship by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee into the execrable treatment of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. This report provided an authoritative evidence base on which I have been able to engage with many stakeholders including ministers, chief police officers, police and crime commissioners, local authorities, civil society groups, fellow lawyers and academics.

Subsequent events such as the publicity over the security camera images of the then Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, together with considerable international coverage of Chinese-owned surveillance capabilities within the UK have underscored the level of public interest and concern in this area.

While I have been encouraged by the sympathetic reception and empathetic commentary I have received, and I very much welcome the legislative response such as the National Security and Investment Act 2021 and the Public Procurement Bill currently before Parliament, there is a pressing need for some real momentum if we are to understand the extent of the risk presented by this proliferation of surveillance and the dependencies we have created upon it.

In that regard I was very interested to hear this week of your assembling a task force to address risks to UK democracy.

As a society, we are becoming inured to public space surveillance. Technological developments have meant that our capability to prepare for, respond to and recover from global crises has increased beyond anything our forebears might have realistically imagined. Every aspect of our Critical National Infrastructure, whether that is energy security, mass public transportation, food and water supply or emergency services, is to some extent dependent upon reliable and secure surveillance capability. When extended into courts, prisons, schools, places of worship, sports and entertainment venues, elections, public protest and other areas of democratic activity the sensitivities and risks of what has been termed omniveillance^{[footnote 1]} are amplified and we must be able to have confidence in the whole ecosystem of surveillance, to be sure that what is technologically possible is only being done in a way that is both legally permissible and societally acceptable.

Trusted Surveillance Partnership

As almost all of our technological capability is in private ownership, the people we trust (police, emergency services, local and national government) must be able to trust their surveillance partners or we are in a lot of trouble, not just as a sector but as a society. Trust in this context means a preparedness to take part in a minimum level of public scrutiny, whether that is of your products and services or your trading history, values and principles. If, like some surveillance companies with which I am currently dealing, entities are unwilling to accept that scrutiny and accountability, that is a business decision for them but it is one that, in my view, ought to disqualify them from working in trusted partnership with our democratic institutions.

In my view, if we are to get the most from surveillance technology, it will need a systemic approach to regulation focusing on integrity - of both technology and practice – along with clear standards for everything and everyone involved because, in a systemic setting, if you contaminate part, you contaminate the whole. Biometric surveillance capability in its widest sense could revolutionise our public services: at the same time, the manner in which that technology is used could jeopardise our very model of policing, local and national government and the societal values on which it is founded.

People must be able to have confidence in the relevant surveillance technology doing what it is supposed to but that means the whole ecosystem that uses surveillance cameras and biometrics, not simply novel offshoots of it. More practically, it also means having equal confidence that the operators of those systems and tools are doing what they are supposed to do; it means understanding the purposes for which the technology is being used, who authorised it and how they came to their decision that it was lawful and proportionate to do so in each case. And it means having clearly defined, published, accessible and intelligible policies publicly setting out the parameters, policies that will be regularly reviewed in light of experience.

Against that backdrop, I believe that the role of public space surveillance and those that provide it has itself become a part of our critical national infrastructure and I would encourage your task force to take this into account at the outset.

I look forward to our meeting shortly on 14 November and to working with you in address these challenges.

Yours sincerely

Professor Fraser Sampson

Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner

1. Blackman, J 2008 Omniveillance, Google, privacy in public and the right to your digital identity: a tor for recording and disseminating and individual’s image over the Internet, Santa Clara Law Review 49, 313-392. ↩