A REVIEW of facial recognition software used by Police Scotland has been ordered after concerns were raised over civil liberties and mass surveillance.
It emerged last month that hundreds of thousands of Scots are contained on a controversial facial recognition database that is being used by the national force. Officers have admitted to using the special technology, which attempts to identity faces captured on CCTV and other images, on more than 400 occasions.
Following pressure at Holyrood from the Liberal Democrats, the party revealed that Nicola Sturgeon has committed to a review, which will be undertaken by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland. Following discussions with Justice Secretary Michael Matheson, the review will be included in its 2015-16 scrutiny plan.
Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said: "This is a big win for the Scottish Liberal Democrat campaign to secure the civil liberties of Scots against unregulated facial technology.
"There are strict rules on indiscriminately taking and cross-referencing our fingerprints and DNA but the same rules do not apply to the use of images on the UK-wide Police National Database.
"The HMICS review will hopefully identify what oversight and safeguards are needed to ensure there are proper grounds for use of the technology. We are a long way from securing solutions, but this review shows why you need the Scottish Liberal Democrats to stand up for civil liberties."
Following a Freedom of Information request submitted by the LibDems, Police Scotland confirmed it has uploaded 601,837 custody mugshots onto the database, featuring 334,594 individuals.
Police Scotland also revealed it had used facial recognition technology in an attempt to match CCTV images with those on the database on 440 occasions.
When details of the use of the technology emerged, Police Scotland confirmed mugshots of people charged with an offence were routinely added to the UK-wide Police National Database but stressed the photos were removed if the suspect was not convicted. It also defended the practice of trawling the vast store of pictures, insisting some searches had solved crimes.
In one case, a thief was traced and convicted after a CCTV image of him stealing from a Durham bookmaker's shop was matched with a mugshot uploaded to the national database by Police Scotland. In another, a man was arrested after a robbery in a Glasgow bookies earlier this year.
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