Over 30 civil liberties, human rights, and racial justice organisations and experts have joined Big Brother Watch in signing a letter to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Department for Science, Innovation & Technology Secretary Peter Kyle warning of the risks posed by the Data Use and Access Bill.
The letter states: “If passed as written, the [..] Bill will undermine faith in law enforcement and dilute crucial data protection safeguards.” The signatories go on to warn that the Bill will allow for police to use algorithmic tools to make automated decisions about suspects, victims and members of the public “on the basis of their socioeconomic status, regional or postcode data, inferred emotions, or even regional accents. This greatly expands the possibilities for bias, discrimination, and lack of transparency.”
The Bill began in the Lords, so time is quickly running out for MPs to address the Bill’s flaws. The signatories call on Cooper and Kyle to urge their colleagues to address the lack of safeguards governing law enforcement use of automated decision-making tools.
COMMENT
Big Brother Watch’s Legal & Policy Officer Jasleen Chaggar:”Labour’s copy-and-paste Conservative Data Bill will open the floodgates to robo-policing with fewer safeguards and less transparency.
“The expansion of machine-made law enforcement decisions will only deepen the existing biases in the criminal justice system, putting marginalised groups at greater risk of opaque and discriminatory outcomes.
“In the high stakes context of policing and criminal justice, which affect our fundamental rights, we must resist a Kafkaesque future of secret police decisions with no path to redress.
“As the Bill rushes towards its final stages, MPs should oppose the weakening of vital safeguards protecting us from unchecked automated police decision-making.”
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