Presentation of the BIOP database

The database is under the responsibility of the Heritage Protection Department, which directs a unit of twelve analysts. A supervisory committee of nine members — magistrates, lawyers, representatives of museums and civil society — checks its operation each year and issues a public report.

The rules of publication, correction and withdrawal are set by a regulation approved by the Assembly. It guarantees the rights of owners, of good-faith buyers and of investigators.

The report arrives through the Desk, through a national focal point or by automated exchange with INTERPOL. An analyst checks the elements, contacts the reporter if need be and looks for a possible duplicate. They complete the description with the available information.

The record is published within twenty-four hours when the file is complete. If elements are missing, it is published in a provisional state flagged as such, and enriched afterwards. Every change is timestamped in a log.

The database contains sensitive information: museum addresses, circumstances of thefts, owners' identities. Only the data useful for recognising the work are public. The rest is reserved for higher levels of access and protected by encryption.

Consultations are logged. An operator may request the history of its searches, and an owner may know who has consulted their record in the course of an investigation, within the limits of the law.

Three projects are under way: extending image recognition to three-dimensional objects, interconnection with the databases of twenty more States and the opening of a programmable interface for approved platforms.

They come with reflection on the use of artificial intelligence to help analysts spot duplicates and suspect works, with systematic human review of decisions.