Short abstract:

The use of biometric technologies in law enforcement reconfigures complex relationships between biometrics, policing and the general public. With reference to the UK, this paper explores legal, ethical and other considerations that shape the guardrails for these controversial uses of biometrics.

Long abstract:

There is a rapidly increasing use of biometric technologies in law enforcement for crime prevention, detection, prosecution, maintaining public order, and providing public safety. The biometric technologies that are being developed, procured and implemented involve collecting, analysing, organising and sharing fingerprints, voice and gait patterns, facial images, iris scans and other physical and behavioural characteristics, and applications of AI are envisaged. With variable evidence-based reliability and efficacy, these tools are used within and across the domain of policing and other public functions (e.g., border control) and private activities (e.g., monitoring ‘public’ space), and at local, national and international levels. Politicians and the public often welcome such developments, with the aim of keeping society ‘safe’. These systems are also the basis of lucrative technological innovation and service industries, placing procurement practices in the spotlight.

Controversies surround the new biometric reconfiguration of law enforcement, the surveillance it involves, and its impact on the public. Possibilities for regulation are framed in legal and ethical terms, featuring statutory enactment, codes of practice, high-level ethical and human-rights principles and derived practical requirements (e.g., police training), and accountability and transparency regimes. Public trust and the trustworthiness of the application of the technologies are implicated. This paper overviews some of these complex issues and relationships between biometrics, policing, societal implications, and regulation. It focuses upon UK developments and draws upon governmental, parliamentary, advisory body and academic sources that bear upon and cast light on these developments and the issues to which they give rise.