NBIS (Romania)
Type: Law Enforcement, Civilian Registry
Technical information:
| Full name | National Biometric Identification System |
|---|---|
| Country | Romania |
| Contents | |
| Images | |
| Individuals | 300,000 |
| Runs database software | |
| URL"URL" is a type and predefined property provided by Semantic MediaWiki to represent URI/URL values. | |
| Related Technology |
Developers and Users:
| Developed by | |
|---|---|
| Owning institution | Romanian Police |
| Custodian institution | Romanian Police |
Description[edit | ]
Romania has planned a single national facial image database for use with FR searches in criminal investigations. This database is NBIS owned by the Romanian Police. NBIS went into production in September 2016 and has been developed in-house.
In November 2019, NBIS contained images from approximately 300 000 individuals. However, images from more than 500 000 individuals from an old non-operational facial image database (Imagetrak) are yet to be transferred to NBIS. The Imagetrak database is also owned by the Romanian Police.
Images in the NBIS database include those taken from suspects and convicts. In addition, the database contains images of unknown persons (i.e. persons whose identity has not yet been established), missing persons and unidentified dead bodies.
As a rule, each individual who is registered in NBIS has one record. During the registration process of a new individual whose identity has been established, a personal identification number is used in order to check whether the person has any prior records in NBIS. If the person has an existing record, that record is updated instead of creating a new one. Duplicate records of the same person (e.g. that might arise during the transfer of images from Imagetrak to NBIS) will be merged. In the case of unknown individuals, an identity is established either by using fingerprints or DNA. If it is not possible to establish the identity of an individual, he/she will be registered as an unknown person.
The database records may contain an unlimited number of images per person. Typically, the following images are taken and enrolled in the database:
- Front view facial image;
- Side view facial images from right and left;
- Full body photograph (frontal view);
- Images of special marks, scars and tattoos.
Images are taken and enrolled into NBIS by forensic examiners of the Romanian Police at police stations in 41 counties, at one police station in Bucharest and at the National Forensic Institute. A request for capturing an image is submitted by police officers and investigators. Depending on the request, a facial image or a facial image together with other biometrics (i.e. fingerprints and DNA) can be collected. Photographs are taken using digital cameras but there are plans to replace these with livescan capturing stations in the future.
The minimum resolution requirement for images is 1024 x 768 pixels. Images in NBIS are in PNG format, while images in Imagetrak are in JPEG format. No compression is applied to the PNG images, but a standard JPEG compression is used for images in that format.
Alongside the images, biographic data (e.g. name, addresses, name of parents), reason for photographing a person, and a criminal record number (if one exists) are stored in NBIS. The biographic data of Romanian citizens can be extracted from the Persons Records Database into NBIS by using a unique personal identification number. Other biometric data (i.e. fingerprints and DNA) collected from the person are stored in separate dedicated databases that are not directly linked to NBIS. However, information about the availability of other biometrics is indicated in NBIS.
Facial images are retained in the database for time periods as stipulated in the legislation. Data can be deleted on the basis of requests from courts, investigators and prosecutors.
At this time, uncontrolled images are not stored in NBIS. However, there are plans to store such images in NBIS in the future.1
References
- ^ "Summary Report of the project “Towards the European Level Exchange of Facial Images” (TELEFI)". (2021) <https://www.telefi-project.eu/sites/default/files/TELEFI_SummaryReport.pdf> Accessed: 2021-03-12