Key donors to the Remain-supporting Change UK party are financial backers of a firm behind a controversial facial recognition software used to register EU citizens due to Brexit, BuzzFeed News can reveal.

The government’s EU Exit: ID Document Check app — to which EU citizens upload identity documents and a photo of their face if they want to stay in the UK after Brexit — attracted widespread criticism from privacy campaigners when it was released by the Home Office last year.



And in an unlikely Brexit irony, iProov, the company behind the app's facial recognition software, is being funded by Jeremy Isaacs and Roger Nagioff, two five-figure donors to Chuka Umunna and Change UK.



The revelation will raise questions over why the pro-immigration, anti-Brexit Change UK party, which is attempting to reverse Brexit and maintain freedom of movement, has accepted donations from investors in a company which is profiting from stricter immigration laws after the UK leaves the EU.

IProov says it uses face-matching software optimised for selfies so “genuine users enjoy a simple, reliable experience, whilst impersonations are prevented”.

Campaign group Privacy International has compared the app to “border guards knocking on every door in the U.K. and forcing EU nationals to show documentation,” warning that “such use of biometrics across our lives is incredibly dangerous”.



Remain-supporting MP David Lammy warned that the trial run of the government’s EU Settlement Scheme had put it “on track for another Home Office scandal on the scale of Windrush”.

A recent Forbes profile said iProov was one of several companies “positively salivating at the prospect of Britain’s separation from the European Union”, reporting that the business would be “making millions from the Brexit immigration nightmare”.

iProov’s CEO Andrew Bud said there are “many cases for tightening up border control without making life even more difficult for citizens.”