This year, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security blocked the access of nearly 60,000 users to Cortex, a platform that constitutes a pillar of police intelligence actions throughout the country. The filing indicates that inactive profiles were the main targets of the measure.
Around 38 thousand registrations are still authorized to access the platform, according to a response given by the ministry via the LAI (Access to Information Act). Users can access a department website to search for data on people, vehicles and security cameras.
There are still local programs, such as Smart Sampa, from the municipal government of São Paulo, which disseminate information on their own platforms.
How Leaf revealed, the government and the federal police are investigating irregularities in Cortex, such as the case in which 70 million CPF were used to carry out more than 213 million consultations through the accounts of the government of Rio de Janeiro.
In internal documents, the ministry acknowledges flaws and says the federal platform will have to be replaced next year. Since 2024, around 2,000 audits have been carried out on the system. The ministry specifies that the investigations “resulted in the blocking of inactive profiles, particularly those who do not have access to the system for a period of more than 90 days”.
The ministry also says these blockages are not linked to a single agency, state or file.
Internal Justice Department documents indicate that Cortex accesses about 26,000 cameras across the country, some of which can read car license plates. In a note, the filing states that “it has active access to approximately 10,000 locations, with the remainder remaining inactive, based on current technical and operational parameters.”
The use of the platform was regulated in 2021, under the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL). The system powers local surveillance programs, some of which use facial recognition technologies and incorporate private sector cameras.
Department members say the adoption of facial and voice recognition on the federal platform still requires exhaustive public debate and should not happen immediately upon Cortex’s replacement. Internal documents, however, mention the service.
“The initiative will enable a qualitative and quantitative leap in knowledge production, incorporating cutting-edge technologies such as real-time analytics, advanced linking, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning and facial and voice recognition,” said a report by the Directorate of Integrated Operations and Intelligence, obtained by the report.
The project consists of replacing Cortex with an “integrated public security platform based on a big data architecture, capable of processing large volumes of information and generating strategic inputs for intelligence, inspection, audit, national defense and state sovereignty actions,” indicates the same Council document.
The strategy of collecting an immense volume of information on the platforms is the target of questions about the violation of privacy and the risks of data leaks.
For the coordinator of Asymmetries and Power at Data Privacy Brasil, Pedro Saliba, there is a lack of transparency regarding the development of new solutions and the results of the Cortex audit. It also specifies that the ministry’s order “prohibits the use of artificial intelligence solutions allowing remote biometric identification, in real time, in spaces accessible to the public, except in certain situations.”
The government’s forecast is to invest around 31.5 million reais to implement the new system, provisionally called “PIN” and “Data Lake Project”. The amounts began to be paid in 2024 and the ministry must transfer R$8.1 million in 2026 and the same amount next year.
In the case of Rio, members of the department suspect that Cortex data was retrieved during robotic requests using keys originally granted to the military police and which were used in a Government Secretariat program. The form of improper access and the destination of the information obtained are still under investigation.
In a press release, the Ministry of Justice specifies that Cortex “is not a surveillance system, nor a mechanism for monitoring or tracking citizens”.
“The platform does not access cameras in real time, does not process images, does not perform facial recognition and does not use artificial intelligence, acting exclusively as a tool for integrating existing official data, with access control, traceability and full audit trails,” the ministry also specifies.
“With regard to criticisms related to data concentration, vulnerability or risk of misuse, the ministry reaffirms that the Cortex system does not carry out control or surveillance of citizens, operating exclusively with previously authorized alphanumeric data, under strict access, audit, governance and institutional compliance controls,” the ministry also specifies.
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