• Interior minister stresses AI-backed biometric technologies would strengthen investigations and reduce police workload

BERLIN 

Germany’s proposal to expand AI-powered biometric surveillance has drawn criticism, with rights advocates warning of potential threats to civil liberties, while the government maintains it will improve national security and the efficiency of law enforcement.

The proposed security package, spearheaded by Conservative Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, would allow police to scrape photos and videos from across the internet to build a vast biometric database for identifying suspects and tracking fugitives.

At its core, the plan would enable AI-driven facial recognition to search the web for matching images of individuals. The government say it would help tackle terrorism, organized crime, and fugitive tracking more effectively.

Human rights groups and digital advocates, however, warned that it could create a “surveillance regime.”

“What the government at the moment proposes is very close to a surveillance regime, meaning that many people's pictures that are already on the internet could be collected and then analyzed biometrically,” said Matthias Spielkamp, executive director of Algorithm Watch.

“It would be indiscriminate – there doesn't have to be any concern raised against me to be included in police databases. We find this problematic from both a human rights and fundamental rights perspective.”

While Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative-led coalition views the legislation as a modernization of policing tools, digital rights advocates say it risks normalizing mass state surveillance.

“It is putting everyone under general suspicion,” Spielkamp warned. “Our concern is that this is not proportional for the aim that the police wants to achieve.”

He added that democratic freedoms could erode if the proposal becomes law.

“This goes against democratic principles. And we argue that in this case, the tool would not be proportional to the aim that it wants to achieve, meaning that storing everyone's biometrical image in a database to solve very few cases of crime is not in line with this idea of proportionality.”

Germany has long maintained some of the EU's strictest privacy protections, shaped by hard lessons from its Nazi past and surveillance practices in East Germany. But growing concerns about terrorism, extremism, and hybrid threats following the Russia-Ukraine war have shifted public debates toward expanding security powers.

Unknown algorithms, unclear accountability

Under Dobrindt’s proposal, federal police could use biometric surveillance and AI software developed by private firms, including US-based Palantir. Experts warn this could create transparency problems, as the inner workings of such algorithms are often kept secret.

“So far, they are not transparent when it comes to the application of AI technologies,” said Matthias Marx of the Chaos Computer Club. He noted that citizens usually learn about new surveillance measures only after media reports, such as previous AI surveillance tests in Hamburg.

“It’s also not public how in detail the algorithms work. We don’t know how the applications work. And we have seen examples from, for example, the US, that they put the wrong people into jail because of facial recognition mistake. Of course, they noticed this after a few days,” he said.

Marx warned that widespread facial recognition could discourage public participation. “The problem is, you cannot hide from facial recognition. Even if you become older, or if you wear half a mask over your face, or if you put some colors on your face, face recognition can still work,” he explained.

“People who have the feeling they could be under surveillance when attending a protest might decide against attending the protest. So, this has huge impact on democratic things we can do, and we tend not to do when we are under surveillance.”

He added: “Even if the surveillance system is perfectly transparent and never makes mistakes, it puts everyone under surveillance and they change their behavior.”

Discrimination concerns

Recent reports show that controversial digital surveillance software developed by private companies often contain racial biases, disproportionately and wrongfully targeting disadvantaged groups, including migrants, women, and people of color.

Amnesty International’s Lena Rohrbach said this is one of the main reasons her organization opposes the new legislation.

“Every human being has a right to not be discriminated against on the basis of gender or color, for example. But we know that biometric identification technologies do discriminate against women and people of color,” she said.

She added that error rates are higher among these groups, leading to wrongful suspicion. “And when we come to automated data analysis of police data, we know that people from marginalized communities are overrepresented in that data,” Rohrbach said.

Rohrbach cautioned that such surveillance would infringe on privacy and freedom of expression.

“So if I, for example, upload a photo of myself at a protest or even just being with friends outside, that in future could be downloaded and used by police authorities and migration authorities to search for wanted people,” she said. “And this affects everyone who uses the Internet.”

Government's view

In a recent interview with weekly magazine Stern, Interior Minister Dobrindt defended the planned use of AI-backed digital surveillance technologies, claiming they would enable more effective investigations, significantly reduce the workload of federal police and security agencies.

“We want to usher in a digital age for security agencies—and use artificial intelligence to do so. Automated, rapid data analysis must be possible in the future. This will ease the burden on the police,” he said. “It will enable us to track down perpetrators more quickly and prevent future crimes. I am currently preparing the necessary legal basis for this.”

Dobrindt sought to downplay concerns about using digital surveillance tools, including software developed by Palantir, and allowing US companies to process and store German citizens' data.

"I don't have any objections to software just because it comes from Palantir. My concern is that we can solve crimes and prevent further ones," he said, adding that Palantir's software is already being tested by several German federal states and is reportedly doing "a good job."

He also dismissed concerns that German citizens' data would be unsafe or transferred to the US, calling such fears "unfounded."