While facial recognition technology is a very sensitive issue in Belgium, certain conditions allow for its use, according to the Supervisory Committee on Police Information (COC).
The COC ensures that the various police forces strictly comply with the privacy and camera legislation in Belgium. Chair Frank Schuermans explained facial recognition software is allowed, within some defined circumstances.
"It cannot be used just anytime, it has to be done within the clear framework of a judicial investigation," Schuermans told Het Nieuwsblad. "It can also be done when the database used to identify a suspect is limited to the police photo database."
What is not allowed is for the police to film all arriving passengers at Brussels Airport Zaventem, and then run facial recognition on them, for example. "What is also unacceptable is 'scraping', when the police compare a suspect's photo with any photo they can find on the world wide web," he explained.
Analysing images
This 'scraping' system is used by the heavily criticised company Clearview, which was recently convicted of the practice in the Netherlands. Now, quite a few Belgian police forces are using software from the Israeli security company Briefcam (which was originally also used in France) to effectively carry out facial recognition within the framework.
The police forces of Ghent and Aalst openly confirm that they use Briefcam software – not for facial recognition, but to analyse camera images, for example for external features of a possible suspect.
"We have Briefcam automatically screen the hours of camera footage for images of a suspect whose witnesses reported that he was wearing a red hoodie, for example," a spokesperson told the newspaper. "Should we have to do that ourselves, it would take us a few hours each time to review that footage."
Antwerp police did not wish to respond to questions about the possible use of Briefcam, stating that relaying any information about it could potentially damage future police detective work. The Leuven and Bruges police forces confirmed that they do not use Briefcam software.
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The Human Rights League, which has been particularly critical of the use of this type of software as a means of bringing in mass surveillance in the past, has no objection to the use of facial recognition in this particular case. "Because it is not just everyone, but people who are heavily suspected of committing a crime," said President Kati Verstrepen.
However, criminal law professor Paul De Hert (VUB) is concerned about facial recognition software being used more and more often by the police. "There has not yet been a proper parliamentary debate on this in our country. The EU, too, is particularly critical of its use."
