German lawmakers approve live facial recognition use by federal police

Germany’s Federal Police appear on track to get new powers in a broad update of their governing rules, including a legal basis to use live facial recognition in public in certain emergency situations.

The changes were approved by the Bundestag, but without the necessary numbers to constitute a final decision, as some lawmakers had already left the proceedings when the vote was held. Once the majority is confirmed, following the summer recess at the earliest, the new rules will go before the Federal Council for final approval.

“Live” or “real-time” facial recognition is prohibited in public spaces under the European Union’s AI Act except in specific circumstances, like time-sensitive investigations of kidnappings or terrorism.

The legislation establishes rules for German Federal Police to use LFR in cases where there is urgent danger to the state or an individual. It also provides legal backing for police use of video analysis for automated threat detection, along with digital surveillance tools, expanded collection of digital data and the use of both drones and anti-drone technology.

The Bundestag passed the Federal Police Act in a simple standing vote, rather than an exact count. The Act updates a set of regulations put in place in 1994 for the country’s 55,000 federal police officers.

German investigative journalist outlet Corrective, however, claims that video clearly shows the necessary 316 representatives necessary to establish a majority were not even present in the Bundestag when the vote was held. The combined votes of the CDU/CSU and the SPD would be sufficient to reach a majority, so a repeat vote, which an official notice from the Bundestag mentions as a possibility, is likely to produce the same result. In the meantime, none of the opposition parties has objected to the vote on grounds of a failure to reach quorum.

Opposition politicians from the Greens and The Left warned about the dubious legal status of LFR and the risk of normalizing excessive surveillance, respectively, in responses reported by Tagesschau.

The German Federal Council (Bundesrat), meanwhile, is proposing a modernization of the country’s Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO-E) that would allow police agencies to run face biometrics searches against publicly accessible images online.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  Germany  |  law enforcement  |  legislation  |  live facial recognition  |  real-time biometrics  |  video analytics