Fingerprint matching via smartphone by Austrian police
With normal smartphones, Austrian police officers capture the fingerprint lines of suspects. The trip to the station is usually omitted.
Biocapture presentation in front of the Rossauer Kaserne in Vienna with Director of the Federal Criminal Police Office Andreas Holzer (back left) and Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (Ă–VP; front right)
(Image: BMI/Karl Schober)
To establish identity, suspects in Austria must now hold their hands under a smartphone. Its camera captures the hands and compares them with state databases full of fingerprints, handprints, and palm prints. This is enabled by the Biocapture software developed in Austria.
Biocapture is used when a person cannot identify themselves and cannot be clearly identified in any other way, says the Austrian Ministry of the Interior. The trip to the police station for fingerprinting is omitted if the person being processed by the officer is not actually wanted. Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP) called Biocapture a “small international sensation” at its presentation on Monday, as Austria is the first country with technology for contactless fingerprint scanning using standard smartphones.
Field tests have been running since August. Biocapture is currently installed on approximately 600 police mobile phones, and all officers are expected to use it by the end of the year. “In 643 checks, 170 hits were achieved in the AFIS system, and several wanted persons were identified despite providing false information,” reported Andreas Holzer, Director of the Federal Criminal Police Office. “A suspected drug dealer was also identified and arrested.”
International project with EU subsidy
AFIS stands for Automated Fingerprint Identification System. It contains fingerprints, handprints, and palm prints of offenders, suspects, crime scenes, and all asylum seekers. Austria commissioned its AFIS in 1991, one of the first countries to do so, and has been connected to the international Schengen Information System AFIS since 2019. A direct connection to the FBI has existed since 2017. Starting next year, Biocapture is set to access databases of numerous other European countries.
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Biocapture has been developed since 2019 by the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), in cooperation with the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, T3K-Forensics GmbH in Vienna, the University of Salzburg, the Agency for European Integration and Economic Development (AEI), the German Secunet Security Networks AG, and the Federal Customs Administration. The funding for this comes from the European Union and the Austrian Ministry of Transport. Biocapture is now to be marketed internationally; according to the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, various security authorities have already expressed interest.
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