Berlin is going to authorize its police to use tools assisted with artificial intelligence to carry out biometric searches for criminals on the internet. This type of among curious people, detectives and investigators who use the open source intelligence (OSINT).
This technology is not a mere photo search engine. They are artificial intelligence models as large as they are controversial: they work because they have previously been trained with the images available in all corners of the network. From the photos of an institute to your personal Instagram profile.
Through AI, these search engines are capable of recognize faces and their patternsto try to find other photos on the Internet in which the subject to be found appeared. In this way, two German journalists, Daniela Klette, who had been living for years under the pseudonym Claudia Ivone. They found videos and photos on the internet of the fugitive dancing capoeira.
Although these types of services are already commercially available on the Internet, the German police are not authorized to use them. This is something that is about to change.according to the German media TAZ. Germany’s Justice Minister will allow police to download up to a trillion photos freely available on the internet for each search and capture case.
After use, all these images must be deleted: the police will only be able to preserve those that match. Otherwise, the police would be creating a mammoth database which would also be illegalboth for appearing in it photographs of innocent people, and for violating the General Data Protection Regulation or the Artificial Intelligence Regulation.
Furthermore, to execute this service, Germany will only be able to hire European suppliers. Only in the case of a “threat to national security” will the police be authorized to hire non-EU AI companies.
Spain already has similar technology: this is how it works
Spain already has an artificial intelligence model that assists the National Police in finding the biometric data of suspects. Its operation is not entirely identical: in this case the ABIS program (English acronym for automatic biometric identification system) if you have a database with four million records.
The appearance of this program was known in November 2022 and advanced it The Countrythe same media that in 2024 noted that this program had already been activated and deployed in “at least 400 investigations.” Of course, its success has been relative: Only in 40% of these cases were positive results obtained that allowed the identification of those involved in crimes.
This ABIS program was initially deployed in thirteen stations: two in Madrid, and the rest in Barcelona, Granada, Málaga, Seville, Valencia, Valladolid, Las Palmas, Zaragoza and Bilbao. Also the Civil Guard It has two facial recognition stations in the capital.
Instead of searching for suspects on the Internet, like the German case, what the Spanish agents do is use the images of a new suspect and compare it with their own database, prepared with biometric records of people with criminal records police. A database that is also controversial, since it takes the royal precepts of community standards to the limit.
We must not forget that Mercadona tried to implement a facial recognition system as a pilot test in several of its stores and That earned him a fine of 2.5 million of euros by the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD).
Furthermore, as you remember Political Watchthe Welsh Police also has a facial recognition system that had 92% false positives and scanned half a million people without consent, which shows the challenge that this type of technology implies in police hands.
