UK Biometrics and Surveillance Commissioner Resigns

The United Kingdom’s Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner has abruptly announced his resignation, jolting the country’s regulatory landscape for police biometrics further into disarray. Tony Eastaugh will leave his post in mid-August.

It has been a relatively short term for Eastaugh, who had previously served as Commander of the Metropolitan Police and as the Home Office’s Director General for Immigration Enforcement. He was appointed in December of 2023, replacing previous Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner Fraser Sampson, and was expected to oversee the closure of the office.

At the time, a “Data Protection and Digital Information Bill” before Parliament proposed to abolish the office of the Commissioner for the Retention and Use of Biometrics and the requirement for a Surveillance Camera Commissioner, with an eye to merging their functions into other existing roles. It also would have repealed the duty to publish a Surveillance Camera Code of Practice, which provided governance beyond data-related issues.

But the proposed legislation fell when a surprise election was called in the UK this past summer. All Parliamentary business was interrupted, and, as per protocol, proposed legislation was effectively abandoned. Any bills that lawmakers wanted to see passed would need to be reintroduced when Parliament was back in session after the election’s conclusion.

It’s no longer clear if or when the Commissioner’s office will be eliminated, and presumably, Eastaugh has decided not to stick around to find out. A brief statement announcing his resignation offered no explanation for it, but alluded to his having been appointed “in a time-limited capacity” to help wind down operations.

“We await news from the Home Office regarding the appointment of a new commissioner and will provide an update in due course,” the government statement said.

For his part, previous Commissioner Sampson had made a bit of a noisy exit. Toward the end of his term, he called government efforts to dismantle biometrics and AI safeguards “shocking” and “tantamount to vandalism.”

Meanwhile, the police use of biometric technologies in the UK has escalated, and newly elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer has recently promised to explore further expansions of the use of facial recognition in the wake of riots and unrest stemming from a recent knife attack.

Source: GOV.UK

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August 8, 2024 – by Alex Perala