BKA to be allowed to use facial recognition AI
Using Artificial Intelligence, a journalist finds photos of former RAF terrorist Daniela Klette - long before investigators. For this method, they lack a legal basis, the investigators complain. Interior Minister Faeser reportedly wants to change that.
The Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Police are reportedly allowed to use facial recognition programs to search for suspects, according to a draft bill by Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, the "Spiegel" reported. With these programs, a comparison with photos of suspects in social networks and elsewhere on the internet is possible. This is intended to enable the authorities to determine the whereabouts of suspects and to identify unknown criminals.
The authorities hope that the new powers will, for example, enable better identification of terrorists from the so-called Islamic State, who can be seen in execution and torture videos and may be hiding undetected in Europe. In the future, investigators could compare screenshots from such videos with social networks using software and thus obtain clues.
SPD politician Faeser wants to change several police laws for this. A new paragraph is also to be included in the Criminal Procedure Code, which allows a biometric comparison with publicly accessible data from the internet. However, there will be no live facial recognition using images from surveillance cameras, for example at train stations.
Former RAF terrorist spotted online
The legal change is a reaction to the arrest of former RAF terrorist Daniela Klette. A journalist had already found photos of her on the net months earlier using facial recognition software, but this method was not allowed for the authorities.
According to the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office, investigators currently lack the legal basis to use facial recognition software to specifically search for criminals. The head of the Lower Saxony LKA, Friedo de Vries, considers this not up-to-date. "I wish we could generate leads using facial recognition methods. That means we should be allowed to search the net for possible whereabouts and connections," he recently said in the NDR. The goal is to be able to search more effectively for criminals. For this, the LKA would develop its own artificial intelligence for facial recognition.
De Vries emphasized that he is only talking about wanted criminals facing more than a year in prison. Similarly, Lower Saxony's Interior Minister Daniela Behrens expressed herself. In the NDR, Behrens said that the police in Lower Saxony have no interest in "arbitrarily and comprehensively scanning the internet and online networks for faces and thus scanning millions of innocent citizens".
The proposed change in police laws by SPD politician Faeser is partly due to the case of former RAF terrorist Daniela Klette, who was spotted online using facial recognition software by a journalist before investigators had the legal authority to do so. This highlights the need for authorities to have the same capabilities to effectively hunt down criminals.
To address the current lack of a legal basis, Chief of the Lower Saxony LKA, Friedo de Vries, has advocated for the use of facial recognition methods to generate leads, allowing them to search for potential whereabouts and connections of wanted criminals.
