Argentine judge demands answers on how police got irregular biometrics access

Argentine national security agencies have acquired irregular access to the biometric records of seven million people, including the president, and footage from Buenos Aires for identifying demonstrators via facial recognition cameras when authorized to access a list of fewer than 50,000 persons of interest, reports Página 12 via Público. The Buenos Aires judge who discovered the scandal has now demanded explanations from the city's Minister of Security and Justice as to how biometric data of a set of 62 cases relating to the capital, including those of the Argentine president and vice president, were transferred from the national ID database – the Registro Nacional de las Personas (ReNaPer) – to the city's authorities, namely the police, reports Página 12/Público. A massive breach of ReNaPer's digital ID database was reported last year. Judge Roberto Andrés Gallardo has suspended the use of the facial recognition system in question and has given Marcel D'Alessandro, Minister of Security and Justice for the City of Buenos Aires Government, two days to explain how the biometrics of persons such as former president and current vice president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and fellow former president Alberto Fernández were used. D'Alessandro had previously said that the system had been deactivated during the pandemic.