France, March 20 -- The investigation, published this week, claims officers are using police-issued mobile devices to search for people in a restricted database using only their photo.

The technology has been available to police since 2022 and gendarmes since 2020, according to Interior Ministry documents seen by Disclose. 

The newsroom spoke to people in France's three largest cities - Paris, Marseille and Lyon - who said they had been photographed and identified by police in the past four years, in some cases without their consent.

Facial matching software installed on the devices allows police to identify individuals by cross-referencing their image with the criminal records database (TAJ), which holds millions of photos. ...