However, Prüm II allows the use of retrospective facial recognition. This means police forces can compare still images from CCTV cameras, photos from social media or those from the victim’s phone with photos stored in a police database. The technology is different from live facial recognition systems, which are often linked to cameras in public places; they face the most criticism.
The European proposals allow a nation to compare a photo with other countries’ databases and see if there are matches – essentially creating one of the largest facial recognition systems in existence. One document obtained by EDRi said the number of potential matches could range between 10 and 100 individuals, although that figure must be finalized by policymakers. A spokesperson for the European Commission says that a person will review the potential matches and decide whether any of them are correct before taking further action. “In a significant number of cases, a photograph of a suspect’s face is available,” France’s interior minister said in the documents. He claims to have solved cases of burglary and child sexual abuse using his facial recognition system.
The Prüm II documents, dated April 2021, when the plans were first discussed, show the vast number of photographs of individuals that the parties possess. Hungary has 30 million photos, Italy 17 million, France 6 million and Germany 5.5 million, the documents show. These images can include suspects, convicted criminals, asylum seekers and “unidentified dead bodies” and come from multiple sources in each country.
Jakubowska says that while criticisms of facial recognition systems have mostly focused on real-time systems, those that identify people at a later date are still problematic. “When you apply facial recognition to footage or images retrospectively, sometimes the damage can be even greater because of the ability to look back at, say, a protest from three years ago or see who I met five years ago because I’m now political opponent,” she says. “Only facial images of suspected or convicted criminals can be exchanged,” the European Commission spokesman said, citing guidance on how the system would work. “There will be no matching of facial images to the general population.”
Photographs of people’s faces should not be combined into one giant central database, the official proposal says, but police forces will be linked together through a “central router”. This router will not store any data, the European Commission spokesman said, adding that it “will only act as a message broker” between nations. This decentralized approach makes Prüm II simpler: police who want to compare fingerprints under the current system have to contact other police forces individually. Under the new infrastructure, states only need one connection to the central router and it will be easier to “add additional categories of data to the system,” according to documents obtained by EDRi.
