Automated Facial Recognition Surveillance
Debate between Neil O'Brien and Kit Malthouse(4 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Kit Malthouse
My hon. Friend raises an extremely important and useful point. He is quite right that the acceleration of technology needs to be embraced by the House in a way that perhaps it has not been in the past. Both he and I stood on a manifesto that contained a commitment to the enabling of technology in a strict and controlled legal framework, and we will be thinking about that over the next few months. Some years ago, I came across a company that was working on online financial security. It had a system that identified someone not only from their password when they entered it, but from the way in which that person typed their password, because apparently the way we type is very characteristic. Those are the sorts of technologies we can deploy to great effect, but with democratic control.
Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)
This technology is potentially a very powerful tool to fight crime, including serious crimes like knife crime where deprived and minority ethnic communities are, sadly, disproportionately likely to be the victims. It could also help to clear up cases like the awful recent murder and aggravated burglary in my constituency. However, will the Minister reassure the House that we will use this powerful new technology only in a proportionate way?