EU plans to link member states' facial recognition databases
The European Union (EU) is planning to create a massive network of national police facial recognition databases, which could one day be linked to a US database.
The Intercept claims to have obtained an internal EU document from an unnamed European official, which indicates that the police forces of 10 EU member states are pushing for the bloc to introduce legislation asking all member states to create national facial recognition databases. All of those databases would eventually be linked with each other.
The initiative, led by Austria, is part of conversations on expanding the directives of the Prüm Convention, an initiative for member countries to share fingerprints, DNA and vehicle registration data with each other to fight crime and terrorism. Ssignatories of the Convention include France, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, Belgium, Austria, and the Netherlands. It was first signed in 2005, and in 2008 the European Council adopted its core elements, including further collaboration on stopping cross-border crime.
