Italy is providing a national framework for police use of real-time remote biometric identification and strengthening AI-related liability rules. Published on 15 September, Legislative Decree no. 160 of 9 September 2026 enters into force on 30 September. Its 22 articles organise police authorisations, create an endangerment offence and facilitate access to evidence in civil actions.
The text opens the exceptions permitted by the European AI regulation, with different procedures depending on whether prevention or investigation is involved. It also brings a direct stake for providers and professional users: security measures, human oversight and technical documentation may come into play in new criminal or evidentiary mechanisms. Their application must, however, take account of the timetable for European obligations.
Public prosecutor intervenes in prevention, judge in investigation
The AI Act in principle prohibits real-time remote biometric identification in publicly accessible spaces for law enforcement purposes. It reserves three categories of strictly necessary exceptions: searching for certain victims or missing persons, preventing serious threats defined by the regulation, and identifying or locating suspects of certain offences. Each state may decide to authorise these uses within the limits of Article 5.
Article 8 of the Italian decree covers prevention and the search for missing persons or victims of kidnapping, trafficking or sexual exploitation. Authorised police officers submit a request to the public prosecutor of the court of the district capital concerned. The authorisation delimits the persons sought, the area and the duration, set at the time necessary within a limit of fifteen days, renewable for periods of fifteen days.
In an emergency, the police may launch the operation after a communication, even oral, to the public prosecutor. They must transmit the authorisation request within twenty-four hours; the public prosecutor has the following twenty-four hours to decide. The absence of authorisation or non-compliance with the conditions requires interruption, together with rules on data deletion and prohibition of use of the results.
Article 13 creates a separate procedure for criminal investigations. It targets in particular suspects of the offences in Annex II of the AI Act punishable by a maximum sentence of at least four years, as well as certain searches for fugitives or victims. The public prosecution requests authorisation from the judge of preliminary investigations, who decides by reasoned decision. The maximum duration is again fifteen days, renewable if the conditions persist.
The emergency regime allows the public prosecution to order activation before validation by the judge. If waiting for the public prosecution is itself impossible, judicial police officers may start the system: they transmit their request to the public prosecution within twelve hours, then the judge must be seized within twenty-four hours of the start. The text then provides forty-eight hours for the decision. The government presentation of a judicial authorisation therefore covers several circuits, with derogations from prior authorisation.
Databases limited to each operation
The authorisations do not allow the progressive constitution of a general biometric database. Articles 8 and 13 require a comparison set specific to each use, limited to relevant data and erased at the end of the authorisation. They prohibit databases fed by non-targeted collection of images from the web or constituted in violation of data protection rules.
These safeguards respond to observations from the Garante, the Italian data protection authority. In its favourable opinion subject to conditions of 14 July, it asked in particular to prevent each new authorisation from permanently enlarging the comparison database.
Seven days of images in certain places, subsequent biometric processing
Article 10 governs retrospective facial recognition. In a targeted search linked to an offence, the public prosecution must request authorisation from the judge without delay and at the latest forty-eight hours after launch; the judge then has forty-eight hours. An exception covers the first identification of a potential suspect after an offence, on the basis of objective and verifiable elements directly linked to the facts.
The decree also provides for the local recording of facial images of persons entering certain places or events with particular public order and security requirements. The initial recording is made without processing biometric data. It may be associated with identity and, where it exists, the seat number on the access ticket. Data in this database are automatically erased after seven days; access and operation logs are subject to a separate regime.
Biometric processing of the images occurs after the commission of an offence, to compare them with the suspect's face. The criteria for designating places and the processing modalities must be specified by a decree of the Minister of the Interior, after consultation with the Garante. The latter had warned of the risk of massive preventive biometric collection. The published text separates the initial recording of images from their subsequent biometric processing, while prohibiting generalised or indiscriminate identification.
A new endangerment offence
Article 437-bis added to the criminal code punishes the omission of technical security measures provided for high-risk AI systems, or of human oversight, when it creates a danger to life or physical integrity. The basic penalty is one to five years' imprisonment, increased to two to eight years when state security is threatened.
Unlawful alteration of a high-risk system, under the conditions defined by the text, is punishable by two to six years, or three to ten years if state security is exposed. Omissions committed through gross negligence are also covered, with a reduced penalty. A provision specific to the professional user sanctions the intentional omission of human oversight when it produces the danger provided for by law.
The decree adds liability of legal persons, under the applicable Italian regime, with a sanction of 600 to 1,000 fine units for the offence of Article 437-bis and prohibition measures. It is therefore necessary to distinguish the penalties incurred by natural persons from the mechanism aimed at the organisation.
Access to evidence that goes beyond high-risk systems
The civil section responds to a practical difficulty: a victim may need documents held by the provider or user of the system to establish their damage. Article 17 allows the judge to order their production by the opposing party or a third party, if the elements presented make the request plausible, including the link between the system's output and the alleged damage.
The text cites logs, risk management, technical documentation and human oversight parameters. The order must remain necessary and proportionate, with protection of trade secrets. An unjustified refusal may have evidentiary consequences; when it concerns the documentation expressly listed, the text provides that the judge takes the alleged facts as admitted after examining the other evidence. Article 18 also provides for a rebuttable presumption of causation when the damage results from a violation of an AI Act obligation.
These mechanisms recall the European proposal for a directive on AI liability of 2022, whose withdrawal was published on 6 October 2025. The Italian scope is broader on one point: its access to evidence covers contractual and non-contractual actions and is not reserved for high-risk systems alone. It does not, however, dispense with establishing the conditions of the request.
European deadlines to be reconciled with the decree
European Regulation 2026/1744 postponed the application of the main sections devoted to high-risk systems to 2 December 2027 for those under Annex III and to 2 August 2028 for those under Annex I. Article 21 of the Italian decree refers to the European timetable for the provisions of the police title whose application depends on it.
The entry into force of the decree on 30 September therefore does not make all European obligations immediately applicable. Nor does it allow presuming the violation of an obligation that does not yet apply. Access to evidence has a broader autonomous scope; criminal sanctions and the presumption of causation require identifying the legal conditions actually met. The text does not expressly settle all the temporal articulations of its liability section.
The comparison with France must finally distinguish the technologies. In its decision of 14 August 2026, the Constitutional Council recalls that the French experiment with algorithmic video surveillance, extended until 31 December 2030, excludes facial recognition and biometric identification. The Italian authorisation to search for a person by their biometric characteristics responds to a different purpose from the French detection of predetermined events.
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