Passports might be used to catch shoplifters in CCTV footage

The authorities has come underneath strain from retailers to crack down on shoplifting, which they are saying has surged prior to now 12 months. 

This is partly on account of organised crime and partly due to the price of dwelling disaster, which has squeezed dwelling requirements for households throughout the board.

The policing minister has introduced an answer to unlock police assets by integrating passport pictures into the police database to discover a match for CCTV footage.

Chris Philp mentioned at a fringe occasion on the Conservative Party convention: “I’m going to be asking police forces to search all of those databases – the police national database, which has custody images, but also other databases like the passport database – not just for shoplifting but for crime generally to get those matches, because the technology is now so good that you can get a blurred image and get a match for it.”

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Including passport footage within the database poses a transparent risk to privateness. But even apart from these issues, the measures fail to deal with the basis causes of the rise in store theft and threat rising the workload for officers.

This is as a result of false positives are unavoidable when hundreds of thousands of photos are scanned utilizing facial recognition expertise. The device can return matches even when photos are blurred or partially obscured, producing a number of “matches”.

It is unlikely the courts would settle for a facial recognition laptop match as proof in the identical method they settle for DNA or fingerprint matches.

This means law enforcement officials would then must sift by means of and both show or disprove people’ involvement, which creates a major workload.

Furthermore, the recommended measures overlook a key motive for the rise in shoplifting. By concentrating on assets in direction of criminalising shoplifters, the proposals fail to adequately assist households dealing with a generational squeeze in dwelling requirements that has left many struggling to afford requirements.

Read extra:
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Police must investigate every theft – home secretary

‘Building a surveillance state would not handle any of these points’

Silkie Carlo, the director of privateness campaigning group Big Brother Watch, mentioned: “This particular policy doesn’t do what the police say they need, what retailers say they need and it doesn’t help people in need either… Building a surveillance state doesn’t address any of those issues.”

A Home Office spokesperson mentioned expertise reminiscent of facial recognition can assist the police “quickly and accurately identify those wanted for serious crimes, as well as missing or vulnerable people.”

“It also frees up police time and resources, meaning more officers can be out on the beat, engaging with communities and carrying out complex investigations,” they added.

“We are working with policing to enable seamless searching of relevant images where it is necessary and proportionate for them to do so to investigate crime and protect the public.”