Bavaria’s Minister of Interior Pushes for Biometric Surveillance

The Bavarian police may soon be equipped with live facial recognition technology in public spaces, according to a proposal by Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU). Herrmann advocates for the use of existing cameras in train stations and large squares to implement this AI-powered surveillance system. He argues that “the police urgently need more opportunities to use biometric facial recognition to investigate criminals” and dismisses data protection concerns, stating that “photos that do not produce a match will be deleted immediately.”

Herrmann acknowledges the potential for errors in the software but remains confident in its ability to enhance search success rates. He cites the State Criminal Police Office’s (LKA) current use of image comparison technology, which in 2023 processed over 4,600 cases, yielding about 1,200 matches with known offenders. The minister now aims to expand this capability to real-time facial recognition, aligning with the EU’s AI regulation that permits such surveillance for specific serious crimes and threats.

However, the proposal faces opposition from data protection advocates. Bavaria’s data protection commissioner, Thomas Petri, expresses constitutional concerns, describing it as “a serious encroachment on the fundamental rights of all people who move around and stay in these public places.” Petri also questions its practicality, noting that even with a 98 percent accuracy rate, hundreds of people could be wrongly identified at busy locations like Munich Central Station.

The debate extends beyond Bavaria, which is one of Germany’s 16 federal states (Bundesländer). At the national level, Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) is proposing to allow federal and state police to conduct “biometric comparison with publicly accessible data from the internet” for searching suspected terrorists and serious criminals.

The proposal from the federal government demonstrates that the issue of biometric surveillance is being considered at both the state and national levels in Germany’s federal system. While Faeser’s proposal doesn’t include live recognition, critics warn against the potential for “total surveillance of public space.”

Source: Heise Online

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August 26, 2024 – by Cass Kennedy