French police accused of using facial recognition software illegally

French national police have been illegally using the Israeli facial recognition software Briefcam since 2015, the French investigative media Disclose reported on Tuesday (14 November).

The use of facial recognition software by law enforcement authorities is prohibited in France. Although still forbidden, this disposition has recently been more flexible for trial purposes in the context of the upcoming Paris Olympic Games in 2024.

“In 2015, [French] law enforcement authorities secretly acquired a video surveillance image analysis software from the Israeli company Briefcam. For eight years, the Ministry of the Interior has concealed the usage of this tool, which enables the use of facial recognition,” states the article by Disclose.

Disclose says it had access to internal emails and documents from the French national police, which constitute proof of using Briefcam without sufficient legal basis.

Euractiv approached the French data privacy watchdog (CNIL), the French Digital Ministry, the Ministry of the Interior and the general directorate of the national police (DGPN) for comment, but no response was provided at the time of publication.

Alleged legal breaches

If confirmed, the usage of Briefcam would breach the French Informatics and Freedom law updated in 2019, stating that it is forbidden to “use any biometric identification system, [or] process any biometric data, and […] implement any facial recognition techniques”.

This prohibition stems from the 2018 enforcement of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which states that processing of all biometric data is prohibited, including facial images.

According to Disclose, the Ministry of the Interior is aware that the police have been using the Israeli software. The article reports that a high-ranking official within the national public security directorate (DNSP) at the interior ministry sent an email to his superiors that read: “Regardless of the software used (particularly Briefcam), it is prohibited to turn to any face-matching or facial recognition device”.

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To be confirmed

According to Florian Leibovici, Briefcam’s Europe sales director, police stations in more than a hundred municipalities are using the software in France, which, according to the company itself, can “detect, track, extract, classify, and alert on persons-of-interest appearing in video surveillance footage in real-time or forensically”.

French MP and board member of the French data protection watchdog Philippe Latombe told Euractiv: “The real question is: How is facial recognition done and by whom?”.

He explained four ways to answer these two questions, with different “levels of blameworthiness”.

In Latombe’s view, the first possibility would be that the French police use Briefcam “without using its biometric tools and under the oversight from a judge”. Then, there would be no legal issues in his view.

Secondly, if the police “use facial recognition tools for a specific search and under the oversight of a judge”. This would indeed lack a legal basis, but would be somewhat acceptable due to the oversight of a judicial authority in the context of an inquiry.

Thirdly, the French MP explained that if the police use facial recognition tools for a generalised scanning of people’s faces under the oversight of a judge, the violation would be severe as it would equate to mass surveillance forbidden under EU and French law.

In the worst-case scenario, police officers would be doing such generalised scanning without judicial oversight, which Latombe considers a serious infraction of existing laws.

Yet, Latombe stated that, as things stood, and according to the information he had at the moment, it seemed that the French police had been using Briefcam for a posteriori inquiries, using specific searches that might have been using facial recognition, yet without using generalised scanning and under the oversight of a judge.

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[Edited by Luca Bertuzzi/Nathalie Weatherald]

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