Following a push by the Ministry of the Interior under Nancy Faeser, the use of AI software for facial recognition by the police is to be introduced in the future. This is intended to help the repressive authorities to search better for poeple which are on the run.
In order to introduce the use of the software, the Ministry of the Interior has now launched a draft law. This is to allow the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the Federal Police to use facial recognition programs in their work. In more detailed implementation, this means that investigators should be able to compare biometrically image data from the Internet on a large scale by means of automated data analysis with artificial intelligence. Biometric features include a person's face, but also their voice or gait. This means that images and videos of a wanted person are taken by the police and compared with images and videos that exist on the Internet by an automated AI program.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, the technology is to be used primarily to track down people who are wanted by the police. The Ministry of the Interior and the bourgeois press argue above all that examples of people such as wanted IS fighters or criminals from organized crime are given, who could thus be better tracked down by the police. These people often experience very little sympathy and support in public, so it makes sense if the reaction is to argue that they want to catch these people. But ultimately, however, the introduction of the widespread use of AI facial recognition by the police is directed against the whole people, because this is a very useful tool for tracking down any kind of ressistance. In the end, not only some reactionaries and criminals are tracked down with this, every person who is a thorn in the side of the state can be monitored with it.
Needless to say,this will mainly be used against Revolutionary People. An example that gave the Ministry of the Interior a great impetus to create this draft law is probably also the tracking down of the alleged former RAF fighter Daniela Klette. Daniela lived underground for decades, as the repressive authorities had been looking for her since 1990. In the end, Daniela was not tracked down by the police, but by a journalist who denounced her. On his own initiative, he had send old picturea of Daniela through an AI program, which compared the picture with data from the Internet and find a current photo in which Daniela can be seen.
Such AI programs to evaluate human data on a large scale have already been used several times by the german police. But the use of these is illegal at the present time because its violates the right to informal self-determination. For this reason, the aforementioned change in the law is also needed so that the police can use the facial recognition on a large scale.
In addition, the draft law on the introduction for facial recognition also clearly violates the coalition agreement of the current government. The agreement contained "a clear rejection of biometric recording for surveillance purposes". It is obvious how the liars of the so called traffic light government led by gangster Chancellor Scholz don't give anything about their previous election promises.
Of course, the SPD-led Ministry of the Interior has already announced how they want to use the AI facial recognition programs in the future and stated that they will only use them to track down wanted persons and allegedly do not plan to use it for real-time facial recognition in public spaces. But this announcement is just as credible as the aforementioned announcement in the coalition agreement that this government would not introduce mass collection of biometric data.
Picture Source: Zeit.de
