Talk & Q&A
With Sonja Peteranderl (Investigative Journalist, Founder of BuzzingCities Lab, DE) and Matthias Monroy (Journalist, Activist, Expert on Civil Rights, Policing, and Security Technologies, DE).
This meetup follows the programme of the “TECHNOVIOLENCE: Confronting Systemic Injustice' (19–21 September 2025). It will bring investigative journalist Sonja Peteranderl and journalist and activist Matthias Monroy into dialogue, with the former providing insight into ongoing predictive policing experiments and the latter tracing the history of facial recognition systems in Germany. How do these systems function, or fail, and how do they reinforce and exacerbate discrimination in Germany? The meetup will explore this phenomenon and discuss potential countermeasures with activists, artists, and the wider civil society.
The German police are increasingly focusing on digital possibilities for ‘predicting’ and ‘preventing’ crimes and other incidents that may occur in the future. They have significantly increased their operational use of 'predictive' data analysis and algorithms in recent years, including geographic crime 'prediction', individual profiling, and data analysis to predict the risk of individuals committing violent acts in future. In this digital ecosystem, the police are also becoming increasingly dependent on commercial players such as the controversial US tech firm Palantir. Its “Gotham” software sifts through large volumes of data, identifying patterns and drawing connections to generate new grounds for suspicion.
Police facial recognition systems have existed in Germany since 2008. The number of queries and affected individuals increases every year; currently, the INPOL database stores the faces of 5.5 million people. The system is now being converted to artificial intelligence. According to the president of the Federal Criminal Police Office, the technology can be largely automated, making an entire department redundant. Only the EU AI Act still requires a final human review of matches. Retrospective facial analyses are increasingly used at the European level as well, with Germany pushing the networking of such systems under the Prüm framework. At the same time, the U.S. government is demanding access to these biometric databases. A legal amendment would also allow German police to conduct facial comparisons online. After pilot projects, real-time recognition is now being introduced in public spaces: Saxony has implemented a system that is also used in mobile units along the border with Poland. In Hesse, a KI-based facial recognition is being rolled out for the first time to issue alerts in the search for “Gefährder” or missing children.
Speakers
Sonja Peteranderl is an investigative journalist and the founder of BuzzingCities Lab – a think tank focusing on violence, crime and the impact of technology – and The School of Conflict & Peace. She covers organized crime, violence, relationship & digital violence, security/policing and tech trends, from predictive policing to criminal innovation for SWR Vollbild, SPIEGEL, Zeit or AlgorithmWatch. She teaches at the Hamburg Media School and is a mediator (International Peace Mediation).
Matthias Monroy is a journalist, activist, and expert on civil rights, policing, and security technologies in Europe. He works as editor for the civil rights journal Bürgerrechte & Polizei/CILIP and for nd.DerTag. His data-driven research and critical reporting published also in left-wing media relates to police practices, digital surveillance and European security policy.
The Meetup programme “Invisible Evidence” by Disruption Network Lab is funded by the Capital Cultural Fund (Hauptstadtkulturfonds), Reva and David Logan Foundation.
The series is organised in cooperation with neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), Berlin.
Curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE).
Disruption Network Lab is part of New Perspectives for Action (2023-2027). A project by Re-Imagine Europe, a collaboration between Paradiso and Sonic Acts (NL), Elevate Festival (Austria), A4 (SK), INA GRM (FR), Borealis (NO), KONTEJNER (HR), RUPERT (LT), Semibreve (PT), Parco d’Arte Vivente (IT), Disruption Network Lab (DE), BEK (NO), Kontrapunkt (MK) and Radio Web MACBA (ES). Co-funded by the European Union.