Databases, Viminale rewrites police identification

The landing point has a technical name: Cir, common identity repository. A cold, almost opaque acronym. The principle, however, is simple: it will be the container in which extracts of the data referring to a person will flow. From the Ministry of Justice will come an indication of a conviction; from Sdi, the Investigation System, a police record; from Afis-Abis fingerprints, palm prints and facial images. Then, the tax code and other financial data from the Inland Revenue Agency, the driver's licence from the Motor Vehicle Bureau, the registry check from the National Register of Resident Population, the validity of residence permits and the presence, or not, in the National DNA Database.

At that point, a subject can be searched from whichever side you take it: name, document, fingerprint, face, biometric trait, genetic profile. And that identity will not stand still. It will automatically update itself after every police operation or change in personal and documentary data. It is here that the system changes its nature: not an archive larger than the others, but a platform capable of welding together fragments that until now could have remained separate.

Change, however, is not only consumed in the servers. It arrives on the street. During a control, a state police officer, a Carabinieri or Guardia di Finanza soldier will be able to use a mobile device to verify a person's biometric identity in real time and read the police information associated with that person. This is a decisive operational step: it makes the use of false generalities or the refusal to provide them much more difficult.

The investigative implication is immediate. Just think of the mafia fugitives who were able to move in disguise for years. Like Matteo Messina Denaro, who used to pass through checkpoints in Sicily under the name of Andrea Bonafede. With a biometric identity linked in real time to databases, the margin for hiding behind a false name narrows. And an ordinary checkpoint can become the point at which a fugitive's identity cracks.

Police-One does not stop at national borders. It is designed to hook into European and international circuits, from Interpol to Schengen, Prüm II (European Automated Police Data Exchange System) and Eurodac (EU centralised biometric database).

Already today, the National Schengen Information System, Nsis, and the international component Sis - the platform through which European states exchange alerts on persons of operational interest - query, among others, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with rapidly growing volumes. On this infrastructure is now grafted a new tool provided by Police-One: the Esp, European search portal: a gateway to query large European systems at the same time. Entry and exit, visas, travel authorisations, biometric data, criminal records of third country nationals.

In short, where several verifications were needed before, the system aims at constructing a single question. Faster. Broader. More readable for those who have to decide in the field.