27 February 2024
Committee asks An Garda Síochána to clarify how they intend to use FRT; calls on Justice Minister to address discrimination and accuracy concerns
The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice has today [Tuesday] published its pre-legislative scrutiny report on General Scheme of the Draft General Scheme of the Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill 2023.
It follows significant concerns about the scheme being raised by ICCL, Digital Rights Ireland, several leading academic experts, the Law Society of Ireland and the Data Protection Commission.
The report highlights serious deficiencies in the general scheme of the bill; says a rationale for introducing FRT should be published; and calls on An Garda Síochána and the Department of Justice to urgently clarify how FRT is intended to be used and what imagery and reference databases are intended to be used.
ICCL Senior Policy Officer Olga Cronin said:
“That these foundational questions remain unanswered 21 months after the minister’s plan to introduce FRT were first announced is extraordinary. One would think knowing those basic details would be established before any moves to legislate for intrusive and discriminatory FRT are even contemplated.
“Face surveillance technology is unreliable, biased, and the accuracy tests put forward to support this bill do not reflect how it would be used in a real-life Irish setting. FRT is not the silver bullet solution it’s presented to be, can enable powerful indiscriminate surveillance and, if introduced as planned, will have a profound long-term chilling effect on Irish society.”
Acknowledging the rights risks at stake, the committee highlights many issues including:
- The need for a “rationale” to introduce FRT in Irish policing to be published;
- There is a lack of clarity on the part of An Garda Síochána about how they intend to use FRT;
- That An Garda Síochána and the Department of Justice need to urgently clarify what facial image reference databases they intend on comparing images against; how they would be used; how a reference database would be populated if An Garda Síochána were to make their own; and what the criteria would be to add a person to a database;
- The need for the Minister for Justice to address FRT accuracy issues;
- The need for the Minister for Justice to address FRT discrimination and inherent bias concerns;
- The need to bring the legislation in line with EU law;
- The scheme is imprecise and unclear in terms of when FRT would be used;
- There is a lack of clarity about the source(s) of imagery An Garda Síochána intend to use;
- Highlights that, while An Garda Síochána and the Department of Justice have said they will not introduce live FRT, the current scheme would need to be redrafted to prevent ‘live-like’ FRT; and
- Problematic internal garda approval of FRT use, as is currently provided in the scheme, should not be allowed.
The committee’s PLS report recommendations reflect many of the concerns raised at the committee’s hearings by ICCL, Digital Rights Ireland and several national and international leading experts, including Dr Abeba Birhane, a senior adviser in AI accountability at the Mozilla Foundation and adjunct assistant professor in TCD; Dr Daragh Murray, senior lecturer and IHSS fellow at the school of law at Queen Mary University of London; Dr Ciara Bracken-Roche, assistant professor at the school of law and criminology at Maynooth University; Dr Nessa Lynch, law lecturer University College Cork and research fellow at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand; Professor David Kaye from UC Irvine school of law and Ms Hinako Sugiyama, digital rights fellow and lecturer in UC Irvine school of law.
Also at the hearings, the Law Society of Ireland said the tests of necessity and proportionality required for the introduction of biometric identification in the Irish context “merited further examination” and submitted that the general scheme was “silent on the oversight of the use of biometric identification systems”.
The Data Protection Commission told the committee that the general scheme, which provides that An Garda Síochána can use any image or video to which it lawfully has access, offers “little clarity as to what is intended”. It also submitted that “significant work remains to be done in order to ensure that usage of FRT respects the requirements of data protection law”.
The DPC told the committee: “A concern is that large existing public databases of facial images could be brought within the scope of biometric identification without specific safeguards to prevent this. The inclusion of such databases would represent a serious and disproportionate intrusion on the rights and freedoms of affected persons.”
The pre-legislative scrutiny phase of this FRT amendment was almost entirely sidestepped last year when the Minister for Justice announced that the amendment would be added at the committee stage of the Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill 2023. This plan was abandoned after significant pressure from civil society, academics and some politicians.