Greece is set to roll out new devices that will enable police officers to perform real-time facial recognition and fingerprint recognition while out and about. The plan to roll out the new technology is part of the €4.5 million “Smart Policing” project, announced in 2017 and aimed at identifying and verifying the identity of citizens stopped by the police. 75% of the project’s cost is covered by the European Internal Security Fund (ISF).
Currently, citizens who are unable to provide documents when stopped by police in Greece must be taken to the nearest police station to have their identity verified. By implementing real-time facial recognition, the new devices will make citizen identification faster and more efficient.
A Greek police officer told the non-profit research and advocacy organization “AlgorithmWatch” the following: “Our goal is to identify people, vehicles, and objects in real time. In this way, we improve the safety of police officers, reduce citizen inconvenience, and save human and material resources.”
According to AlgorithmWatch, police in Greece will initially issue at least 1,000 devices, with the option to deploy an additional 9,000 by summer 2021 if the plan proves effective. The devices, which look similar to smartphones, will be connected to 20 different databases owned by international and national authorities, such as the Greek Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Europol, the FBI and Interpol.
Commenting on the planned device rollout to Infosecurity magazine, Hank Schless, senior director of security solutions at Lookout, said: “These devices will be connected to multiple government databases. If one of them is compromised, it could serve as a backdoor to a larger database. We see this with cybercriminals behind phishing campaigns that rely on social engineering, primarily targeting mobile users. Attackers convince victims to share login credentials or install malwareto gain access to the entire infrastructure.”
In March 2020, the Greek non-profit digital rights organization Homo Digitalis submitted a request to the Greek Data Protection Authority (DPA) expressing concerns about the legality of the “Smart Policing” project. Homo Digitalis argued in the request that “there is a high probability that the Greek police will violate EU laws on the processing of personal data” as set out in the Greek Constitution, national laws related to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
