French police use facial recognition and social media to identify rioters

French Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin announced that police will run facial recognition against the millions of profiles in the TAJ criminal database and images from TikTok, Instagram and Discord to identify suspects in last weekend's nationwide riots. Investigators can also draw on footage from 80,000 cameras across Paris and on geolocation. The case shows public cameras, social platforms and biometric databases being linked for identification at scale, even as French regulators have previously ruled some police deployments unlawful.