British police chiefs are pushing for access to photos from a national driving licence database – as they continue retroactive facial recognition efforts to detect people involved in violent riots that erupted last summer.

Of the 1,700+ arrested, 127 suspects were identified using retrospective facial recognition, the National Police Chiefs Council has now revealed, saying it tapped “police force custody image databases, HM Passport Office, Immigration, and Interpol databases” to run the analysis.

“Police currently lack access to the database held by the DVLA, and access to this would have helped during this investigation. While this is being looked at by the Home Office, where a national investigation of this kind occurs in future, police access to the DVLA database would help to substantially improve offender identification,” police chiefs added.

That’s according to submissions to the Home Office, which also reveal police used drones and live audio feeds from the “protests” to capture intelligence on the nationwide riots, which erupted after the July 29 attack in Southport in which Cardiff-born Axel Rudakubana killed three children – triggering a wave of misinformation amplified on social media.

More joined up thinking needed?

National, possibly automated, support is required if local police forces in the UK are to keep up with digital surveillance requirements, said Home Affairs Committee’s report – as evidence on last year’s summer riots saw police calls for greater biometric access and joined-up thinking.

The report also detailed the struggles police forces had dealing with tracking social media posts and conversations on “closed” encrypted platforms. The Home Affairs committee said police providing evidence to its inquiry saw “a potential role for more support at the national level, particularly where closed platforms such as Telegram were being used.”

Local police particularly struggled to identify “false positives” on social media and Telegram, the report said, specifically citing the widespread rumours of protests in August 2024 that failed to come to fruition but led to counter-protest events with thousands of participants.

In addition to identifying criminal activity on social media, police told the inquiry they struggled to combat this sort of disinformation, as Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist "questioned whether the police had sufficient reach or access to the right channels in order to use social media effectively in this way."

"I do not want a national body..."

Not every police chief wanted that to be a nationally led issue: “I do not want a national body being the response if I need to find out about some social media issue on the streets of Hartlepool,” as Chief Constable Webster of Cleveland Police put it in a submission, adding “I need that to be local, I need it to be quick and I need it to be informed by my operational people on the ground. I need something locally to do that.”

The inquiry also heard that at least one police chief, Deputy Director of the Police Powers Unit Andrew Johnson, believed automation could be used to solve some of the issues highlighted and “help forces monitor social media more effectively.”

Reform on data sharing?

The call for national support on the issue comes after the Home Office detailed a need for "fundamental reform to improve data and intelligence sharing across forces and regions" in its evidence.

This was despite testimony from forces including Police Service Scotland that intelligence sharing "at a UK level was extremely effective" during the riots and West Midlands Police’s view that "intelligence flow between forces was not disrupted" despite far-right attempts to do so.

Home Affairs Committee Chair Karen Bradley said lessons "must be learned" on police cooperation during the incident. She added "the Government’s plans for police reform will be especially important for making sure national policing structures support forces effectively in emergencies."

Calls for support on surveillance of encrypted channels are particularly notable in light of the UK government's recent fallout with Apple over its push for an encryption backdoor for its iCloud security tools.

See also: AI crime is rising, so police need to fight fire with fire says Turing Institute

With regard to access to driving licence photographs from the DVLA’s database, Groups including Liberty have expressed concern over a clause in the government's Crime and Policing Bill that would allow the Secretary of State to grant police digital access to DVLA records for "purposes relating to policing or law enforcement", including facial recognition.

While the government pushed back on the idea it would be used for this purpose as recently as March, police chiefs are keen to secure it. 

This is nowhere near the first time a call for greater facial recognition databases has come up, with the National Crime Agency and Home Office previously detailing plans for better facial matching service for law enforcement. Other imaging surveillance tactics used during the riots included Greater Manchester Police's use of body camera and drone footage and audio live streamed into its Force Command Module to identify where to send resources to combat disorder, part of its "significant investment in mobile technology,” the force said. 



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