- Green politicians criticize facial recognition software
Green Party politicians react cautiously to plans by the Federal Ministry of the Interior to use software for facial recognition in the search for suspected terrorists and serious criminals. The vice-chairman of the Greens in the Bundestag, Konstantin von Notz, told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND) that the aim of consistently combating terrorism is shared. "However, it must first be noted that the coalition agreement clearly rejects the biometric recording for surveillance purposes in public spaces for good reason."
A draft bill by Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) provides for the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Police to use facial recognition software. This is intended to enable investigators, for example, to compare internet videos of IS members with images in social networks to obtain clues about the whereabouts of Islamists, a ministry spokesman explained.
The law enforcement agencies have been calling for the use of such instruments to be permitted for some time. This demand has gained new momentum following the arrest of former RAF terrorist Daniela Klette. A Canadian journalist had already found older suspected photos of Klette and her dance groups in Berlin months earlier using a facial recognition program on the internet.
The planned legislative change still has to be approved by the cabinet and the Bundestag. According to the ministry, real-time facial recognition in public spaces, for example through video surveillance at train stations, is not planned.
Von Notz remained skeptical nonetheless. He said about the minister's legislative plans: "Forms of surveillance in the digital space, such as the tool proposed by the Federal Minister of the Interior, raise equally profound constitutional questions. Even those who voluntarily seek the public sphere of a social network do not thereby relinquish their constitutionally guaranteed rights."
The spokesman for the Green parliamentary group in the Interior Committee of the parliament, Marcel Emmerich, told the RND that they would examine the plan closely in the parliamentary procedure. "We want to prevent sensitive data of innocent persons from being massively recorded and evaluated by AI systems - often through opaque algorithms - across the board."
The draft bill proposes that the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Police can use facial recognition software, as suggested by Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser. However, Konstantin von Notz, the vice-chairman of the Greens in the Bundestag, remains skeptical about this, asserting that forms of surveillance in the digital space raise profound constitutional questions.
