AI-Supported Real-Time Biometric Identification (judicial authorisation model)

Hessen operates the first live facial recognition deployment by a German federal state. It began on 10 July 2025 in Frankfurt's Bahnhofsviertel, with reporting citing around 50 cameras in the district.

The model differs from live facial recognition as deployed in the UK in a way that matters more than the shared technology.

TARGETED SEARCH, NOT A STANDING WATCHLIST

Section 14(9) of the Hessian Security and Order Act permits targeted search for a specific person only where necessary to avert an actual and present or actual and foreseeable danger, to avert a terrorist offence, or to search for victims of kidnapping, human trafficking or sexual exploitation, or for missing persons recorded in police search systems. Section 14(8) additionally allows identification of an individual already flagged by pattern-recognition alerting where there is danger to life or limb.

The distinction from a UK deployment is that the system is oriented to finding one named individual, in a defined place, for a defined reason — rather than continuously screening a crowd against a standing list of many people.

THE AUTHORISATION REQUIREMENT

Judicial authorisation is required in principle under Section 14(11) before deployment. Where the police authority orders use itself, judicial confirmation must be obtained within 24 hours. Each use must be logged under Section 14(10), and use must be limited in time and place to what is strictly necessary.

This is the most substantial procedural constraint on live facial recognition documented anywhere on this site. UK deployment rests on force policy assessed by a court; here a judge authorises each use in advance.

HOW THE POWER WAS CREATED

The statutory basis arrived by a route worth recording. The facial recognition and pattern-recognition powers were added to the Bill by a short-notice amendment on 5 December 2024 — after the public expert hearing on the legislation had already taken place on 12 November 2024. The amended Section 14 came into force on 2 February 2025.

THE CASE FOR IT

Requiring a judge to authorise each deployment addresses the central objection to live facial recognition, which is that a force decides for itself when to scan the public. Prior judicial authorisation, mandatory logging, and a strict necessity limit are meaningful controls rather than stated principles.

Restricting the purpose to specific serious circumstances — terrorism, kidnapping, trafficking, missing persons — narrows the technology to uses where the case is strongest.

THE CASE AGAINST

The people scanned are the same people either way. A targeted search for one individual still requires processing the biometrics of everyone who passes the camera, and the constraint operates on what police may do with matches rather than on whose face is captured.

The legislative route is a genuine criticism. Adding a surveillance power by amendment after the expert hearing has concluded avoids the scrutiny that hearing exists to provide.

Critics including netzpolitik.org note that Hessian video surveillance is not confined to statistically crime-affected locations but may cover police-defined spaces perceived as unsafe, which imports a discretionary element into where the capability sits, and raise the accuracy-disparity objection documented elsewhere on this site.

WHAT IS NOT ESTABLISHED

The vendor and algorithm in use are not identified in the sources reviewed.

How many authorisations have been sought and granted, and how many refused, is not published.

Whether any identification has resulted in an arrest is not established.

Whether other German states intend to follow is not established here.