Britain is ‘omni-surveillance’ society, watchdog warns

Exclusive: Fraser Sampson says law is not keeping up with AI advances as police retain 3m images of innocent people

Britain is an omni-surveillance" society with police forces in the extraordinary" position of holding more than 3m custody photographs of innocent people more than a decade after being told to destroy them, the independent surveillance watchdog has said.

Fraser Sampson, who will end his term as the Home Office's biometrics and surveillance commissioner this month, said there isn't much not being watched by somebody" in the UK and that the regulatory framework was inconsistent, incomplete and in some areas incoherent".