Surveillance · The contract
Who bought the facial-recognition contract
A €9M contract for live facial recognition was signed without a public tender. The buyer’s name was left blank.
By R. Mehta, J. Park · Madrid · · 10 min
A contract for real-time facial recognition was awarded directly, without the competitive tender such sums normally require. On the published version, the purchasing authority was redacted.
the contract was signed by a municipal body that had told residents it used no such technology.
You can redact a name. You cannot redact a budget line.
The budget line that funded it was public all along. We trace it back to the office that signed, and publish the contract as released.
Methodology
knowless matched the redacted contract to a public budget allocation by value, date and reference number, then confirmed the authority through a second filing.
Surveillance · Procurement · Biometrics