Gardaí will soon receive powers to use artificial intelligence to analyse the gait, voice and other physiological features of suspects during criminal investigation.
These biometric investigative tools will be used alongside facial recognition to identify suspects in serious offences and to locate missing people.
At first, investigators will only be able to use these powers retroactively, to process evidence already available to them such as CCTV and phone footage. However, further legislation is planned to allow these tools to be used in a live setting, alongside live facial recognition, in situations where there is an imminent threat to life.
Under the plans, gardaí will be empowered to use artificial intelligence to identify the physiological characteristics of suspects on recorded footage.
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This includes computer programmes that can analyse the gait of a person - the unique way they walk - to identify them. Other programmes will be able to identify people based on their voices patterns.
There has been significant debate regarding the Government’s plans to introduce facial recognition technology in recent years, with criticism coming from civil liberties and privacy groups.
However, this is the first time the Government has confirmed it will also legislate for other forms of biometric data in criminal investigations.
The upcoming legislation “will provide the power to utilise biometric technologies generally”, a Department of Justice spokesman said.
“This could include the use of physical, physiological or behavioural characteristics of an individual, such as face, gait or voice”, he said, but will not include DNA analysis and fingerprints, which are provided for in separate legislation.
As technology develops, other potential forms of analysis will become available overtime. These include tools allowing suspects to be identified by other unique markers, such as the shape of their ears or the pattern of veins in their hands.
Technology is even being developed to identify people based on the movement of their eyes and the unique odours they give off. All of these types of biometric data are provided for in the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act which, according to the Department of Justice, which will form the basis for Irish legislation in this arena.
Artificial technology will be used to compare biometric characteristics and provide a percentage based assessment of whether they match.
Garda management has long been calling for facial recognition powers to analyse digital evidence, which is becoming more prevalent in criminal investigations.
Manually going through hours of CCTV to identify suspects “is becoming unfeasible and ineffective”, Commissioner Drew Harris said last year.
He was speaking in the aftermath of the Dublin riots, when gardaí had to manually process 22,000 hours of CCTV footage to identify offenders.
In response to queries, the department stressed the new powers will be based on a “bedrock” of human rights and that trained gardaí will review all results produced by biometric technologies.
“At the moment Garda investigations can involve teams of gardaí spending months and months trawling through footage from CCTV, footage captured on a phone or from passersby.
“Biometric technologies will help An Garda Síochána carry out investigations quickly and efficiently and will save valuable Garda time. It will prove to be of particular assistance where time is of the essence in order to preserve a person from a threat of serious harm or a threat to their life or the lives of others.”
The department said the technology will also save gardaí “from the harrowing work of poring over thousands or even millions of images and footage of child sexual abuse material”.
