Brazilian Justice Ministry's Córtex AI Surveillance System Operates Without Judicial Oversight
Brazil's Justice Ministry operates Córtex, a real-time surveillance system with 55,000 users across over 180 agencies that monitors people and vehicles without requiring users to justify their queries or obtain judicial authorization. The system integrates camera feeds, vehicle tracking, and sensitive databases including health and employment records.
What happened
The Ministério da Justiça e Segurança Pública (MJSP) operates Córtex, a surveillance platform available to over 180 public agencies with approximately 55,000 civilian and military users across Brazil. The system enables real-time monitoring of people and vehicles through 35,900 cameras positioned on federal highways, urban streets and avenues, and stadium entrances without requiring users to provide justification for queries.
The MJSP acknowledged to reporting agencies that there is no requirement for users to explain the reason for monitoring specific 'targets,' who authorized the surveillance, how long monitoring lasted, or what results were obtained. Between 2019 and January 2022, the system had 'identified' approximately 360,000 'targets,' according to MJSP data.
Reported impact
The system integrates data from multiple sources including real-time camera feeds and an 'electronic fence' feature that reads vehicle license plates in real-time, as well as databases containing salary information from the Annual List of Social Information (Rais), confidential patient records from the Unified Health System (CADSUS), and information on politically exposed persons (PEPs).
Users include members of the Armed Forces, civil and military police, federal police, penitentiary agents, members of the Public Ministry, firefighters, civil guards, and servers from agencies outside the Unified Public Security System (SUSP), with access spanning across multiple Brazilian municipalities and highways.
Index analysis
The MJSP stated that monitoring is justified as an 'intelligence' activity of the public security sector and therefore does not require prior judicial authorization or occur within police inquiries or legal proceedings. The ministry reported only 62 audit reports of system use over four years of operation.
Governance controls
The MJSP stated that while audit action should occur if there is suspicion of irregularities in queries, the ministry indicated it does not have responsibility to control access to queries by other agencies.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.