Debate about facial recognition: LKA chief wants more powers

The President of the LKA in Lower Saxony would like more powers in law enforcement. He would like to have his own AI tool for facial recognition.

Lower Saxony's LKA chief de Vries would like to see an in-house facial recognition tool for law enforcement.

(Image: JpegPhotographer/Shutterstock.com)

Aug 3, 2024 at 11:37 pm CEST

5 min. read

By

Anika Reckeweg

This article was originally published in German and has been automatically translated.

The President of the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) of Lower Saxony, Friedo de Vries, wants more powers for the police when it comes to 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 fugitive criminals. De Vries wants to initiate a debate about this, he says in an interview with NDR.

The debate about the use of facial recognition for searches had already caused a stir earlier: police arrested the suspected former RAF terrorist Daniela Klette in Berlin at the end of February. The special feature: journalists had already found clues to a possible whereabouts before the police with the help of the search engine PimEyes, which specializes in biometric facial recognition. Images of the wanted person appeared on the website of a Berlin capoeira club. Klette also had a Facebook profile under a different name. However, the police were dependent on tips from the public. Jochen Kopelke, chairman of the police union, has already criticized the fact that the police are not allowed to use technology that anyone can operate from home. PimEyes is under pressure due to massive data protection concerns, among other things.

No legal basis for AI application

However, there is no legal basis for scouring the web with AI trained on biometric images, explains LKA chief de Vries. He envisions separate artificial intelligence for facial recognition for law enforcement use, independent of private sector providers such as Clearview AI and PimEyes. "I hope that we can also use facial recognition methods to generate investigative approaches," de Vries told NDR. "That means being able to search the network for possible locations and points of contact. The aim is to be able to search for criminals more effectively." He is concerned with criminals who are facing more than one 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, the Ministry of Justice is examining how such a possibility could be legally implemented. In an interview with NDR, Behrens emphasized: "The Lower Saxony police have no interest in scanning the Internet and online networks for faces without cause and across the board, and thus scanning millions of innocent citizens." Evrim Camuz, justice policy spokesperson for the Greens, would like to see facial recognition software only used for the most serious crimes and raises the question of which training data should be used to feed an AI developed by the authorities without violating civil rights.

AI Act regulates use in law enforcement

Biometric facial recognition is also a point in the AI Act, which came into force on Thursday. In it, the European Union has banned the collection and analysis of biometric images from the internet on a massive scale and without cause in order to create a database (Article 5, paragraph 1, letter e). This means that six months after it comes into force – i.e. on February 2, 2025 – providers such as PimEyes will have to disappear from the EU market. In principle, facial recognition for criminal prosecution is prohibited under the AI Act. However, the EU regulation makes an exception for 16 clearly defined criminal offenses: these mainly include scenarios where there is imminent danger, such as the search for kidnap victims, human trafficking, an imminent terrorist attack, illegal trafficking in drugs and weapons, grievous bodily harm, murder, rape and environmental crime. Nevertheless, investigators require the authorization of a judicial or administrative authority.

If the state criminal investigation departments have their own artificial intelligence, the question of how the technology should be trained also remains unanswered. Here too, the authorities must comply with data protection regulations and citizens' rights to informational self-determination.

In the UK, the London police authority recently blocked access to PimEyes after noticing thousands of accesses from the authority's computers, according to the news website iNews. The UK has previously been criticized for promoting all-round surveillance.