Police officers should also be able to use facial recognition programs when searching for suspects. This is what a draft law from the Interior Ministry proposes. Green politicians are not yet convinced.
Green politicians are reacting cautiously to plans by the Federal Ministry of the Interior to use facial recognition software to search for suspected terrorists and serious criminals. The Greens’ deputy chairman in the Bundestag, Konstantin von Notz, told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND) that the desire for consistent combating of terrorism was shared. “However, it should first be noted that the coalition agreement contains a clear rejection of biometric recording for surveillance purposes in public spaces, and for good reason.”
A draft law by Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) provides that the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Police may use facial recognition software. This will enable investigators to compare Internet videos of IS members with images on social networks in order to obtain clues about the whereabouts of the Islamists, a ministry spokesperson explained.
The investigating authorities have long been pushing for the use of such instruments to be permitted. This demand was given new impetus after the arrest of the former RAF terrorist Daniela Klette. Months earlier, a Canadian journalist had used a facial recognition program on the Internet to find older alleged photos of Klette and her dance groups in Berlin.
Bill still has to overcome several hurdles
The planned change in the law still has to be approved by the Cabinet and the Bundestag. However, according to the ministry, real-time facial recognition in public spaces – for example through video surveillance at train stations – is expressly not planned.
Von Notz was nevertheless skeptical. He said of the minister’s legislative plans: “Forms of surveillance in the digital space, such as the tool proposed by the Federal Minister of the Interior, also raise profound constitutional questions. Even those who voluntarily seek out the public nature of a social network do not thereby give up their constitutionally guaranteed rights.”
Marcel Emmerich, chairman of the Green parliamentary group in the Parliament’s Interior Committee, told the RND that the plan would be examined closely in the parliamentary process. “We want to prevent highly sensitive data from innocent people from being collected and evaluated on a large scale by AI systems – often using non-transparent algorithms.”
Source: Stern
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