No lawful retention and deletion regime for the 19 million custody images feeding facial recognition

A 2012 High Court ruling found indefinite retention of custody images of unconvicted people unlawful, and the Police National Database still holds around 19 million facial images, including hundreds of thousands of people never charged; the former Biometrics Commissioner estimated several million are unlawfully held. Inspections found 11 of 17 forces do not proactively review or delete images, and ageing systems cannot bulk-delete. DNA and fingerprints have had automatic deletion under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, facial images have no statutory regime, and this stockpile is the search corpus for expanding retrospective facial recognition.

National facial recognition rollout is being built on a database a court declared unlawful fourteen years ago. Innocent people are searchable by face indefinitely, and each year of inaction hardens the precedent that judicial rulings against surveillance practice can be ignored.

Extend the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 automatic-deletion regime to custody images, fund replacement or remediation of the database systems with deletion by design, and require published weeding metrics per force. It is a concrete legislative clause plus a bounded IT programme, and a natural candidate for the forthcoming biometrics bill.

// State-led: Instrument: legislative clause extending PoFA 2012 automatic deletion to custody images, plus funded PND system remediation.

Courts declared indefinite retention unlawful fourteen years ago, millions of innocent people's images remain the search corpus for facial recognition, and the deletion clause awaits an unintroduced bill.