Dutch authorities still track thousands of former suspects exonerated in criminal cases
Personal data of people who were suspected of a crime is often kept in police and justice databases despite the fact that they legally need to delete the data, an investigation by RTL Nieuws showed. Numbers requested by RTL Nieuws from the Public Prosecution Service (OM) show that almost 20,000 people have been considered a suspects unjustly in the last four years. The OM only decided that mugshots and fingerprints had to be deleted in 392 of these cases.
Experts have pointed out that mugshots and fingerprints are considered the most sensitive information. "With facial recognition technology, the police can - without anyone realizing it - find out who that person is and how that person moves in public spaces,” said Masa Galic of the Free University Amsterdam. She is a specialist in the usage of personal data in law.
“There are cameras everywhere, which the police can use the images of. That is scary,” she added. She also said that it gives a bad signal that the police and justice department are not able to follow their own laws.
The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) has said that they are “very concerned” about this. They have also stated that they will investigate the use of facial recognition by police.
The Ministry of Justice and Safety, which the police and OM fall under, has admitted that this is an ongoing problem and added that this will likely remain the case for over a year. “The problem is complex, but important steps have and are continuing to be made.”
The ministry is now going to judge whether tens of thousands of people's sensitive personal data was kept in the database illegally. It was already determined by the Ministry of Justice and Safety that 80,000 people’s data may be stored in the police data banks illegally.
RTL Nieuws reported that a spokesperson for the ministry told the company that 6,000 identities of this group have been deleted. It was decided that the data would be kept in around 15,000 cases. The goal is that the decision whether the data has to be deleted in all the cases is to be decided by the beginning of 2025.
