Cops told: Check your own DB before asking for passport data

"The Home Office has told police forces to check their own photo databases before asking it to search its libraries of passport and visa facial images, as well as avoiding urgent requests "unless it is absolutely necessary." In new guidance for its passport counter fraud officers and caseworkers in its Immigration Fingerprint Bureau, the Home Office details the hoops that law enforcement officers (LEOs) need to jump through to get an image checked against the huge facial databases used for UK passports and visas."

"The new Home Office guidance tells staff to check that a search requested by a LEO is "in the public interest" - defined as tackling serious crime, supporting national security or the protection of life - is likely to achieve its aims and to ensure "all other reasonable alternative avenues with lesser intrusion have been exhausted before requesting a facial image search.""

"This includes searches of police image databases and, in the case of foreign nationals, the immigration database of fingerprints. If LEOs go ahead, the process falls some way short of automation. They have to get the approval of a police inspector or equivalent rank, fill out a form for each search of either the passport or visa database and send it to a secure official email address."

The Home Office instructed police forces to check their own photo databases before requesting searches of passport and visa facial image libraries and to avoid urgent requests unless absolutely necessary. The guidance requires officers to ensure searches are in the public interest—defined as tackling serious crime, supporting national security or protecting life—and to exhaust all less intrusive alternatives, including police image databases and immigration fingerprint records for foreign nationals. Each search requires police inspector approval, a completed form per passport or visa database search, and submission via a secure official email. Freedom of Information data show large increases in such searches since 2020, prompting legal challenge calls.

Read at Theregister