BBW update provides detail about the ICO's Facewatch investigation

Civil liberties and privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch (BBW) has issued an update to its July 2022 complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) concerning the live facial recognition company, Facewatch.

The update, which includes information obtained through a Freedom of Information request, provides further details to the blog article that the ICO posted in April explaining its decision to take no further action against the company. According to the information obtained by BBW, the ICO found that Facewatch's processing of personal data had breached the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on a number of points: 

• Article 5(1)(a) – lawfulness, fairness and transparency;
• Article 5(1)(b) – purpose limitation;
• Article 5(1)(e) – storage limitation;
• Article 6 – lawfulness of processing;
• Article 9 – processing of special categories of data;
• Article 10 – processing of personal data relating to criminal convictions and offences; and
• Recital 38 – the rights of children
• Schedule 1, Part 2, s10 of the DPA 18.

Due to the number of serious infringements, BBW expressed disappointment that the ICO chose not to take anything other than advisory action. 

In a related post, the New York Times (£) writes about the growing use of facial recognition technologies by private businesses. Such implementations are increasing worldwide, but notably, the article highlights the UK and Facewatch specifically. The article includes an interview with Simon Gordon, who formed Facewact in 2010, as well as giving examples of the mistakes that can happen.