Moldova’s Ministry of Internal Affairs is proposing a national facial image registry to help law enforcement identify suspects, investigate crimes, find missing people and identify human remains using facial biometrics.
The proposed Facial Image Registry, or RIF, would be more than a repository of photographs.
The system would maintain separate collections of identified and unidentified facial images, with each image assigned a reference number.
On paper, that design gives authorities a searchable facial identification capability without automatically enrolling the entire population.
In that environment, a centralized facial identification system raises questions about function creep and how restrictions on searches will be independently enforced.