UK’s Home Office has signed a £7 million (US $9.2 million) contract with IBM to work with law enforcement in developing a biometric ‘mega-database’ to “prevent crime and better safeguard the public,” despite a watchdog’s privacy concerns, NS Tech reports.

In June, IBM said it would no longer sell its biometric facial recognition and analysis software to law enforcement. IBM will supply the National Law Enforcement Data Service (LEDS) with an interface and platform to access law enforcement databases and search for matches with the Police National Database’s biometric algorithm. NS Tech suggests it could eventually be combined with Automatic Facial Recognition (AFR) technologies.