A day is a long time in immigration enforcement technology. On 4 November, the Guardian and campaign group Liberty reported on new Home Office plans to deploy Live Facial Recognition (LFR) technology as part of a massive expansion in immigration enforcement.

Following a trial at the ferry port in Holyhead, where passengers enter the UK from the Republic of Ireland, LFR will now be deployed more widely. Cameras in public places and transport hubs will seek to identify visa-overstayers, as well as those already due for removal — or who were removed once, and are trying to return.

But on 5 November, the relevant Home Office documents had mysteriously vanished, leaving only a “410 Gone” message. A new page on LFR in Immigration Enforcement provides almost no information, just a couple of links — one to the Holyhead trial deployment data (three arrests in nine days), and the other to standard operating procedures.

Instead, the Home Office was keen to promote its new legal framework for using LFR in law enforcement, to be included in the Police Reform Bill. Taking into account the results of a large public consultation, the UK Government is finally making laws to control the use of AI camera systems that turn everybody’s face into an ID card. The Policing Minister promises that, in future, an independent regulator will oversee use of LFR and other biometric technology by law enforcement, to ensure that it is used proportionately and lawfully.

Nothing in this new framework would rule out using the technology to identify anyone wanted by Immigration Enforcement (IE). Indeed, an industry explainer written in early October spells out how the new Home Office IE policy will apply rules to ensure proportionate and lawful use of LFR.

Meanwhile, travellers through major UK airports are being told to look forward to passport-free travel. Soon, even putting your passport into an e-gate will be unnecessary, as the same cameras that currently match your physical face to the mugshot on your travel document will go straight to the biometric passport database.

Like the redundant road tax discs and parking permits that no longer sit on a driver’s windscreen because the traffic warden can put their vehicle registration straight into a computer, the paper passport will be a quaint relic of the pre-digital era. The entire passport database will be accessible directly for matching with your weary, post-flight features, a boon for convenience and a nightmare for cybersecurity.

It seems obvious that the Live Facial Recognition technology which enables paperless entry points can also be used for checking our faces against watchlists of criminals and recidivist deportees. Many will ask why it’s taken so long, given the vagueness of official records about who is in the country, and when they arrived.

Why, then, is the Home Office suddenly so coy about its plans to apply the same technology within, not just at, our borders? Could it be that the new, long-overdue legal framework governing the use of LFR on the public is primarily “designed to improve public confidence”? That confidence could be undermined by reports of its use in immigration enforcement.

Expanding its use beyond dangerous criminals and vulnerable runaways to include people who entered Britain on a student visa and took a cash-in-hand job rather than returning home does raise questions of proportionality. Many immigration breaches are civil, not criminal. If the threshold is set that low, could I be spotted by a camera and hauled off the street for non-payment of a parking fine, or letting my dog foul the pavement, or simply breaching a Respect Order forbidding me to feed the birds?

Perhaps the Home Office is right to rethink “we will have cameras everywhere to recognise irregular immigrants” as a selling point for ever-expanding surveillance.

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Timandra Harkness presents the BBC Radio 4 series, FutureProofing and How To Disagree. Her book, Technology is Not the Problem, is published by Harper Collins.

TimandraHarknes

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