![](https://emergencyservicestimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/ESS-Button-resized.png")
Fraser Sampson took the opportunity in his final report to Parliament about his work as the government’s Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner to lay bare how little support and interest he had during his tenure and his fear that the closure of his office would see ‘legislation and oversight of (this) growing technology fall further behind.’
Laid in Parliament on 24 January 2024, the former Commissioner submitted his 63 page report to the Home Office prior to his departure from office in October 2023. New legislation currently going through Parliament sees the current oversight of biometrics and surveillance abolished and replaced with new functions under a newly formed Information Commission, as the Information Commissioner’s Office will be renamed.
‘I have completed my tenure as I began: a firm advocate for the appropriate use of facial matching and other emerging biometrics by the police and for an overarching accountability framework that keeps pace with that technology, in each case meeting the legitimate expectations of the public. What seems to be a narrow and disconnected focus within the Home Office is jeopardising both.’
Describing the process of legislative change as ‘leaden,’ he expresses concern that the government has a narrow focus on DNA and fingerprints which he says risks legislation and oversight falling behind the technology.
He commissioned independent gap analysis to consider how the oversight of public space surveillance camera systems and biometric materials will change under the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill which is currently undergoing scrutiny in the House of Lords.
This study found, he writes, that the abolition of your Surveillance Camera Code of Practice would create vulnerabilities for users of technologies and for the rights of individuals subject to them. He goes on to say that in the absence of a clear plan for how the functions previously exercised by him and his Office will be replaced, ‘risks there being more rather than less regulatory complexity.’
Mr Sampson’s report is filled with frustration at the lack of support and interest by civil servants and marginally less so by government Ministers although he says that worked by ‘sheer persistence.’
‘There is so much more that could be done to enable the police and other agencies to harness the extraordinary technological advances in biometrics and surveillance, and to embed accountability for their use and for the proper application of the already ubiquitous artificial intelligence.’
Concluding this valedictory report, Mr Sampson says that his chief concern is about the capacity of the Information Commissioner’s Office (or under its new name after the legislation comes into force) ‘to adequately oversee the evolving and burgeoning areas of surveillance camera technology and biometrics within the framework of data protection alone.’
In December 2023, the Home Secretary appointed Tony Eastaugh as the new Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner to continue the role until the legislation comes into force and oversee the transition to the new structures.
To read similar articles, check out our Leadership channel.
