UK police facial recognition searches of passport and immigration databases
UK police have secretly conducted facial recognition searches against passport and immigration databases containing 150 million photos since at least 2019, with search numbers escalating dramatically from 2 in 2020 to 417 in 2023. Privacy advocates have filed pre-action legal correspondence against the Home Office and Metropolitan Police, characterizing the practice as an unaccountable breach of privacy rights without clear legal basis or public disclosure.
What happened
UK police have been conducting facial recognition searches against passport and immigration databases since at least 2019, according to a Liberty Investigates and Telegraph investigation. The practice has been accelerated without parliament being informed, and no public policy governs the searches.
Freedom of Information requests by Big Brother Watch revealed that police searches of the passport database began with 2 in 2020, increased to 417 in 2023, and reached 377 in the first nine months of 2024. Immigration database searches were 16 in 2023, 102 in 2024, and 34 in the first four-and-a-half months of 2025.
The databases contain an estimated 150 million photos combined, including 58 million biometric passport photographs, which were enrolled in a facial recognition library without parliament being informed and without public policy to govern their use.
Reported impact
Privacy advocates have characterised the practice as an 'historic breach of the right to privacy' and an 'Orwellian' surveillance system. Former minister Sir David Davis MP stated 'It's outrageous that parliamentarians and the public have been kept in the dark about this extraordinary surveillance system'.
Big Brother Watch and Privacy International have issued pre-action correspondence to the Home Office and Metropolitan Police calling for a moratorium on the facial recognition searches.
Index analysis
The Home Office has denied the databases are used to investigate crimes such as shoplifting, burglary and theft, despite suggestions by then-Policing Minister Chris Philp that passport and immigration data should be used for such investigations. The Home Office stated it is working toward introducing a policy to govern the searches.
Police are conducting searches against over 150 million photos without a clear legal basis, and there is no requirement that officers have reasonable grounds for suspecting that identified persons have committed any crime.
Governance controls
Retrospective or forensic facial recognition searches are supposed to use the Police National Database, which contains roughly 20 million images of people previously arrested or declared persons of interest. However, the High Court ruled 13 years ago that storing images of acquitted persons is unlawful, yet such images remain in the database.
Biometric Commissioners for both the UK and Scotland have noted the damage that retention of unlawful biometric data causes to public trust.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.