The president of the Lower Saxony state criminal police office (LKA), Friedo de Vries, wants more powers for the police in terms of programs such as facial recognition software. According to the LKA’s current legal opinion, investigative teams are not allowed to use artificial intelligence (AI) to search the internet for photos of fugitives. De Vries wants to start a debate about this, he said in an interview with NDR.
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The debate about the use of facial recognition for searches has already caused a stir: The police arrested the suspected former RAF terrorist Daniela Klette in Berlin at the end of February. Special feature: Using PimEyes, a search engine specializing in biometric facial recognition, journalists had found clues to possible hideouts before the police. Photos of the wanted people appeared on the website of a Berlin capoeira club. Klette also ran a Facebook profile under a different name. However, the police relied on information from the public. Police union chairman Jochen Kopelke has already criticized the fact that the police are not allowed to use technology that everyone can use from home. Among other things, PimEyes is also under pressure due to massive data protection concerns.
No legal basis for AI application
However, LKA boss de Vries points out that there is no legal basis for searching the network with AI trained on biometric images. He envisions his own artificial intelligence for facial recognition for law enforcement use, independent of private sector providers such as Clearview AI and PimEyes. “I hope we can also generate search approaches using facial recognition methods,” de Vries told NDR. “This means being allowed to search the internet for possible hideouts and contact points. The aim is to be able to find offenders more effectively.” He is concerned about offenders who spend more than a year in prison.
According to the NDR report, Lower Saxony’s Interior Minister Daniela Behrens (SPD) and Justice Minister Kathrin Wahlmann (SPD) are open to such a discussion. According to the broadcaster’s information, the Ministry of Justice is investigating how such an option could be legally implemented. Behrens emphasized this in an interview with NDR: “The Lower Saxony police have no interest in scanning the Internet and online networks for faces without reason and across the board and thus scanning millions of innocent citizens.” Evrim Camuz, justice policy spokesman for the Greens, would like to see facial recognition software used only for the most serious crimes and raises the question of what training data the AI developed by the authorities should be fed with without violating civil rights.
The AI Act regulates use in law enforcement
Biometric facial recognition is also included in the AI Act, which came into force on Thursday. The EU has banned the collection and evaluation of biometrically readable images from the internet on a large scale and on an unrelated basis in order to create databases. (Article 5, paragraph 1, letter e). This means that six months after its entry into force – i.e. on February 2, 2025 – providers like PimEyes will have to disappear from the EU market. In principle, facial recognition is prohibited for law enforcement under the AI Act. However, the EU regulation makes exceptions for 16 clearly defined crimes: these mainly include scenarios in which the threat is imminent, such as the search for kidnapping victims, human trafficking, imminent terrorist attack, illicit trafficking of drugs and weapons, grievous bodily harm, murder, rape and environmental crimes. However, investigators still need approval from a judicial or administrative authority.
If state criminal investigation offices have their own artificial intelligence, the question of how the technology should be trained also remains open. Here, too, authorities must comply with data protection rules and citizens’ rights to informational self-determination.
In Great Britain, the London Police Department recently blocked access to PimEyes after observing thousands of accesses from government computers. News site iNews reports. Britain has been criticised before for promoting all-encompassing surveillance.
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