Italy's Interior Ministry Introduces Unified Identification Code for Law Enforcement

For years, when a person came within the purview of law enforcement, identifying them meant chasing them through different archives. A single identity, multiple checks. Now the Ministry of the Interior is trying to break this complex logic by resorting to a code. Just one.

It's called CUI, Codice univoco identificativo (Unique Identification Code). It's the key destined to connect, at the same instant, everything the State knows about a person: personal data, fingerprints, DNA, biometric profiles, police records, judicial, public security, and prefectural authority measures. No more distinct archives. But a recomposed identity, interrogable from different points and updated with every new operation.

Police-One Project

This is the heart of Police-One, the major restyling of inter-force databases coordinated by the Department of Public Security, with a strategic role entrusted to the Central Directorate of Criminal Police. Not a simple IT update, but an attempt to redesign the identification machine: faster and more integrated, less exposed to the fragmentation that for years forced the police, carabinieri, and Guardia di finanza to chase the same person through different systems.

The problem is that years of stratified development have produced an increasingly heterogeneous information architecture: platforms nearing end-of-life, monolithic components difficult to update, non-homogeneous integrations. Police-One was created to bring order to this complexity.

The project, in implementation of Regulation Prüm II, is worth 82.7 million euros: 50.5 million come from the complementary operational program "Legalità" 2014-2020, 22.7 million are borne by the Viminale, and another 9.4 million cover ordinary maintenance with Administration funds.

Mobile Device for Officers on the Street

The landing point has a technical name: Cir, Common identity repository. A cold, almost opaque acronym. The principle, however, is simple: it will be the container into which data extracts related to a person will flow. From the Ministry of Justice will come the indication of a conviction; from the SDI, the Investigation System, a police record; from Afis-Abis, fingerprints, palm prints, and facial images. Then the fiscal code and other financial data from the Revenue Agency, the driving license from the Civil Motorization, the demographic check from the National Registry of Resident Population, the validity of residence permits, and the presence, or absence, in the National DNA Database.

At that point, a subject can be searched from whatever angle you take them: name, document, fingerprint, face, biometric trait, genetic profile. And that identity will not remain static. It will automatically update after every police operation or modification of personal and documentary data. This is where the system changes nature: not just an archive larger than others, but a platform capable of welding together fragments that until now could remain separate.

The change, however, is not confined solely to servers. It reaches the street. During a check, a State Police officer, a Carabinieri or Guardia di finanza officer can use a mobile device to verify a person's biometric identity in real-time and read the police information associated with that subject. This is a decisive operational step: it makes the use of false identities or the refusal to provide them much more difficult.

The investigative implication is immediate. Consider mafia fugitives capable of moving for years under false pretenses. Like Matteo Messina Denaro, who in Sicily passed through roadblocks under the name of Andrea Bonafede. With a biometric identity connected in real-time to databases, the margin for hiding behind a false name shrinks. And an ordinary check can become the point where a fugitive's evasion cracks.

Interpol and Schengen

Police-One does not stop at national borders. It is designed to connect to European and international circuits, from Interpol to Schengen, Prüm II (European system for the automated exchange of police data), and Eurodac (centralized biometric database of the European Union).