Overview
- The Bundestag held a first reading this week and referred the justice bill to the Justice Committee and the digital-investigations drafts to the Interior Committee for detailed review.
- The government says the drafts would let prosecutors authorize automated biometric matching of online images for serious crimes and ban a central state image database.
- Independent reporting says Union and SPD members of the Interior Committee have backed deploying live facial recognition at train stations, airports and ports, a development that sharpens the dispute over scope and safeguards.
- Civil-society groups and legal bodies have mobilized public opposition, collecting more than 167,000 petition signatures and warning the measures risk mass surveillance, data transfers to private AI vendors and a large sensitive police dataset.
- Legal experts predict constitutional and EU-law challenges if passed, and the committee stage will set technical limits that determine whether courts or regulators later block or narrow the new powers.