Policing has a positive duty to use biometrics data and new technology to safeguard the vulnerable and bring offenders to justice.

That’s powerfully illustrated by the important work of retrospective facial matching against the Child Abuse Image Database to identify and safeguard victims.

Biometrics and new technology makes investigating Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse faster and more effective and supports international effort to remove images from the internet.

This means a case with 10,000 images, which would typically take three days to analyse, can be reviewed in an hour through facial matching - which also has welfare implications for officers and staff.

Most importantly, it shifts the balance from reviewing images to identifying victims, with the overarching aim of safeguarding children.

I’m passionate about meeting our positive duty to use biometrics data and new technology for law enforcement. Passionate about keeping people safe from harm, protecting the vulnerable, bringing criminals to justice. Using biometrics data and new technology can assist in that mission and Police Scotland will not step back from our positive duty.

At the same time, I’m absolutely clear and determined our approach will be legal, ethical and underpinned by our values of integrity, fairness, respect and commitment to upholding human rights.

Therefore Police Scotland was, and continues to be, hugely supportive of the establishment of a Scottish Biometrics Commissioner and we embraced the clarity and direction provided by the Code of Practice, which came into effect in November 2022. We were grateful for the support and challenge to ensure Police Scotland was compliant with the code.

At the same time, the Scottish Police Authority’s challenge and support has been vital in developing a rights-based pathway and an approach to data ethics that can give confidence and necessary scrutiny to new data driven technology being used by policing.

It’s important we face these conversations head-on and give the public insight into the discussion so the communities we serve know policing is using biometrics data and new technology as a force for good.

Through engagement with the Commissioner and the Code and the Authority and rights-based pathway, we can have public conversations and enable public scrutiny and accountability around changes as we discharged our duty to uphold people’s safety.

The Commissioner has underlined, for example, that Police Scotland has never deployed live facial recognition technology capable of mass public space surveillance in Scotland.

However, he has outlined circumstances where the future use of such technology should be available as an option for potential deployment, for example where there is a significant threat to public safety or security; threat to life situations; and where such a risk or threat cannot be adequately addressed by conventional policing techniques alone.

At the same time, with progress towards a national roll out of body worn video for all frontline officers and staff and the use of evidence gathered to get better and quicker outcomes for victims of crime through effective and ethical sharing through the criminal justice system presents data considerations.

Biometrics data – photographs, finger prints, DNA – has been with us for many decades.

As new technology provides more powerful ways of cataloguing, storing, sharing and analysing biometrics, policing, and our partners, must continue to develop understanding, capability and capacity in this developing area and ensure we are at the forefront of law enforcement and rights and retention considerations.

To that end, we established a biometrics team headed up by Gillian Jones earlier this year and I’m grateful for the work they continue to lead on.

The Biometrics in Criminal Justice Conference is about building on the strong relationships that have been established and continuing a public conversation which explores the opportunities and challenges future technologies hold for policing and to ensure we maintain and develop the strong ethical basis for policing’s use of biometric data.

I’m grateful and enthused to be part of the conference and to shine some light on what will continue to be an incredibly important conversation for years to come.

Thank you