Lawsuit alleges German police misusing facial recognition images for system tests

An IT security professional in Germany is suing the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (IGD) alleging his face biometrics have been misused and transferred illegally.

Specifically, Janik Besendorf has filed suit in Wiesbaden accusing the police of sharing nearly 5 million facial images from the Inpol-Zentral database with Fraunhofer to test four new BKA facial recognition systems, heise online reports. The lawsuit is receiving support from the Chaos Computer Club (CCC).

Besendorf’s biometrics were loaded into the database in 2018 after he was charged with trespassing.

CCC became aware of BKA’s testing process through a Freedom of Information Act request in 2021. According to the report, Federal Data Protection Commissioner Ulrich Kelber was concerned with the practice, but declined to halt it. This is because the BKA assured the Commissioner that the biometric data was under its control, and not available to Fraunhofer employees. Fraunhofer employees were in the room under the supervision of the BKA during the tests, however.

Opposition party The Left complained at the time that the response exemplifies how data protection requirements are ignored by authorities, claimed to be beyond their competence, or claimed to not apply in various situations.

The testing data claims arise soon after a proposal drafted by Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt was leaked and found to contain significant expansions of police powers to use facial recognition. Those include approval to compare biometric data from wanted individuals with data from social media and around the internet, as proposed a year earlier by then-Interior Minister Nancy Faeser.

German police are also seeking expanded use of facial recognition at Bundesliga football matches.

Article Topics

biometric testing  |  biometrics  |  face biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  Fraunhofer Institute IGD  |  Germany