UK Police To Be Able To Run Face Recognition Searches on 50 Million Driving Licence Holders

The police will be able to run facial recognition searches on a database containing images of Britain's 50 million driving licence holders under a law change being quietly introduced by the government. From a report: Should the police wish to put a name to an image collected on CCTV, or shared on social media, the legislation would provide them with the powers to search driving licence records for a match. The move, contained in a single clause in a new criminal justice bill, could put every driver in the country in a permanent police lineup, according to privacy campaigners.

Facial recognition searches match the biometric measurements of an identified photograph, such as that contained on driving licences, to those of an image picked up elsewhere. The intention to allow the police or the National Crime Agency (NCA) to exploit the UK's driving licence records is not explicitly referenced in the bill or in its explanatory notes, raising criticism from leading academics that the government is "sneaking it under the radar." Once the criminal justice bill is enacted, the home secretary, James Cleverly, must establish "driver information regulations" to enable the searches, but he will need only to consult police bodies, according to the bill.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

nmap -sV --script vuln -p- <target-network>

tail -f /var/log/suricata/fast.log | grep <cve>

Check Vendor Security Advisory Bulletin

title: Detect Exploitation - UK Police To Be Able To Run Face Recognition Searches on 50 Million Driving Licence Holders
id: e0765b1f-04c6-4cdb-ae3f-b78addf603a0
status: experimental
description: Automatisch generierte SIEM-Erkennungsregel basierend auf CTI Intelligence
references:
  - https://tsecurity.de/
author: iShareStuff CTI Automated Detection Engine
date: 2026-09-24
logsource:
  category: network_connection
  product: any
detection:
  selection:
      CommandLine|contains:
        - 'exploit'
  condition: selection
falsepositives:
  - Legitime administrative Zugriffe oder Penetrationstests
level: high
tags:
  - attack.initial_access

rule CTI_Threat_Indicator {
    meta:
        author = "iShareStuff CTI Automated Detection Engine"
        date = "2026-09-24"
        description = "YARA Signature for "
    strings:
        $str = "UK Police To Be Able To Run Fa" ascii wide
    condition:
        any of them
}