Public procurement · military units

# The software that reads your pulse through a camera, bought by a military unit

In December 2021, Military Unit 0418 bought a program that reads facial expressions and, with an added module, estimates the pulse from video. In SEAP, the state’s procurement platform, the unit appears as a number with the web address of the National Intelligence Academy. We read the public records of five numbered military units: 11,673 records. This is what they show, and what stays outside them.

SEAP data downloaded on 2 October 2026. Every figure on the page carries the code of the record it comes from.

- **58,806 lei** for FaceReader, with the module that estimates the pulse from video. Bought by UM 0418, completed on 13 December 2021.DA29494996
- **668,000,866 lei** for the cybersecurity system funded by PNRR, Romania’s EU recovery plan. Contract of 30 January 2026, signed by UM 0929 together with UM 0296.CAN1162528
- **Six months** from the certification bought by UM 0296 (8 January 2026) to the day services of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) were marked “granted” on the list of qualified electronic-signature providers (10 July 2026).DAN2648900 · ADR list
## Five units, a number instead of a name

In SEAP a military unit appears with its number, a tax code and an address. Sometimes the record also has a web address, which says more than the name does. We read every record of five such units: accepted direct purchases, direct award notices and contract award notices.

**The five units on this page and what their SEAP records say**

| Unit | What its SEAP record says | Records | Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| UM 0418 | Strada Odăi 20, Bucharest. The record’s web address is animv.ro, the site of the National Intelligence Academy “Mihai Viteazul”. | 3,049 | Apr 2018 – Oct 2026 |
| UM 0296 | Strada Dinu Vintilă 8, Bucharest. On the national trusted list, the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) appears “through UM 0296 București”. | 1,416 | Apr 2018 – Oct 2026 |
| UM 0929 | Strada Franceză 48–50, Bucharest. Central government authority; main activity: public order and safety. | 1,216 | Sep 2017 – Oct 2026 |
| UM 0510 | Strada Roma 32–34, Bucharest. No web address in the record. Medical supplies are 41% of the value of its direct purchases. | 3,475 | Jul 2016 – Dec 2022 |
| UM 02499 | Ministry of Defence, Drumul Taberei 7–9, Bucharest. The record’s web address is cybercommand.ro. | 2,517 | Dec 2017 – Sep 2026 |

## What UM 0418 bought in December 2021

Three purchases from the SEAP catalogue, from one supplier, were published on 9 December 2021 and accepted on 13 December. Together they come to 156,424 lei. The first is the most interesting.

**Three purchases from the same supplier, PRAGMA COMPUTERS, completed on 13 December 2021**

| Program | What it includes, according to SEAP | Value | Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| Noldus FaceReader | A perpetual licence for automated facial-expression analysis, with add-on modules for action units, project analysis and remote photoplethysmography. Remote training and one year of support. | 58,806 lei | DA29494996 |
| Noldus Observer XT | Software to integrate, synchronise and analyse behavioural data, plus video-recording software for up to four simultaneous streams. Perpetual licences, remote training. | 72,715 lei | DA29508050 |
| Social Science Profiler Plus | A one-year, single-user licence for Social Science Profiler Plus, a text-analysis program (according to its maker). | 24,903 lei | DA29495175 |
| Total | 156,424 lei |  |

### How SEAP describes the product in the first row

DA29494996 · the product line’s description, in English, with the original’s typo

> FaceReader – software for automated analysis of facial expressions (seamlessly integrated with The Observer XT)
Including:  FaceReader perpetual license with Project Analysis Module;  Remote training
Add-ons to FaceReader license:  FaceReader Action Unit Module (custom expressions + action units analysis);
Remote Photoplethysmography Module (indication on hear rate and heart rate variability in a completely unobtrusive manner);  1 year NoldusCare
In short: a facial-expression analysis program with a module that gives “an indication of heart rate and heart rate variability in a completely unobtrusive manner”.

### How a camera can take your pulse

With each heartbeat, the blood volume in the skin’s small vessels rises a little and the skin absorbs slightly more light, mostly green. The change is too small for the eye but not for an ordinary camera: the average colour of the face pixels rises and falls with the heart. A program looks for that rhythm in the clip. The technique is called remote photoplethysmography (rPPG). It was shown with an ordinary camera and ambient light in 2008 and refined since, for example by the colour-based method of 2013.
  [Verkruysse et al., 2008](https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.16.021434); [de Haan, Jeanne, 2013](https://doi.org/10.1109/TBME.2013.2266196).

### What a pulse cannot tell

The measurement depends on light, movement and skin tone: an analysis of three datasets found that average performance drops significantly for the darkest skin type.
  [Nowara et al., 2020](https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPRW50498.2020.00150).
  And a quickened pulse is not a lie. In a 2003 report the US National Research Council found that the psychological states that go with deception can arise without it, and that almost a century of research gives little basis for expecting very high accuracy from the polygraph.
  [National Research Council, 2003](https://doi.org/10.17226/10420).

SEAP does not say what the unit will use the program for. The maker, Noldus, sells it for human-behaviour research, and on its page today vital signs are in the product’s most expensive tier.
  [noldus.com/facereader](https://www.noldus.com/facereader).

### How big the purchase is, next to the rest

UM 0418 has 3,015 direct purchases and direct award notices in SEAP, worth 43,253,511 lei in all. The three programs above are under 0.4% of that. Most are everyday purchases. Repairs appear in 252 titles and vegetables and fruit in 114; then come plagiarism-checking services and Google Workspace for Education licences.

It is not the only one of its kind in the records we read. In January 2019 UM 0418 renewed 21 Maltego XL licences, an open-source intelligence (OSINT) investigation platform, for 87,146.77 lei ([DAN1060919](https://e-licitatie.ro/pub/direct-acquisition/award-notice/view/100073046); [maltego.com](https://www.maltego.com)). In July 2020 UM 02499 bought a “facial recognition software program” for 5,730 lei ([DAN1303314](https://e-licitatie.ro/pub/direct-acquisition/award-notice/view/100331967)).

The text-analysis program in the third row, Profiler Plus, comes with coding schemes for the social sciences, including leadership-trait analysis after Margaret Hermann. Its maker lists the schemes.
  [profilerplus.org](https://profilerplus.org).

## Since 2025, subscriptions to AI as well

In 2025 and 2026 UM 0418 bought licences to commercial services: generated voice, avatar videos and a language model. The sums are small, between 3,840 and 7,200 lei.

**Subscriptions to commercial AI services, 2025–2026**

| Date | Unit | What was bought | Value | Code |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 June 2025 | UM 0418 | ElevenLabs Pro licence, one year (voice generation) | 5,443 lei | [DAN2488581](https://e-licitatie.ro/pub/direct-acquisition/award-notice/view/101562550) |
| 27 June 2025 | UM 0418 | Synthesia Creator licence, one year (avatar videos) | 3,840 lei | [DAN2488577](https://e-licitatie.ro/pub/direct-acquisition/award-notice/view/101562543) |
| 7 July 2026 | UM 0418 | Synthesia Creator licence, 12 months | 5,172.72 lei | [DA40771725](https://e-licitatie.ro/pub/direct-acquisition/view/122564616) |
| 13 July 2026 | UM 0418 | ElevenLabs Pro licence, one year | 5,780 lei | [DA40803638](https://e-licitatie.ro/pub/direct-acquisition/view/122599336) |
| 23 July 2026 | UM 0418 | Google Cloud account for the Gemini API, six units of 675 lei | 4,050 lei | [DA40866283](https://e-licitatie.ro/pub/direct-acquisition/view/122666656) |
| 22 September 2026 | UM 0929 | Gemini subscription for the project “TechTraceTrail – 3T” | 7,200 lei | [DAN2859748](https://e-licitatie.ro/pub/direct-acquisition/award-notice/view/101945090) |

The description of the July 2026 Gemini purchase says how much they plan to use: 50,000 tokens (units of text) in and 5,000 out for each analysis, at 1,000 analyses a month, or 55 million tokens. SEAP does not say what is analysed.

On 22 September 2026 UM 0929 bought a Gemini subscription for the project “Strengthening the capacity to investigate serious crime through better digital investigation and examination capabilities”.

## From the unit’s number to the institution’s name

UM 0296’s SEAP record does not say what the unit is. The national trusted list does, and a purchase in SEAP shows the unit buying its certification as a qualified provider half a year earlier.

- 8 January 2026
UM 0296 buys from Omega Trust, for 72,000 lei, the “certification of UM 0296 București as a qualified service provider”. Record: [DAN2648900](https://e-licitatie.ro/pub/direct-acquisition/award-notice/view/101727990).

- 10 July 2026
The national trusted list, kept by Romania’s Authority for Digitalisation, marks four services of the Romanian Intelligence Service as “granted”: a root authority and authorities for qualified electronic signatures, qualified electronic seals and qualified time stamps.

- 28 September 2026
Edition 86 of the list appears. It has 10 providers. Two of them are state special services: the Special Telecommunications Service and SRI.

Certificates issued by a qualified provider underpin qualified electronic signatures, which have the same legal effect as a handwritten signature throughout the European Union (eIDAS Regulation, Art. 25). The list does not say who can request certificates from SRI.
  [eIDAS](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2014/910/oj), [ADR list](https://trustedlist.adr.gov.ro/trustedlist.xml).

The Ministry of Defence, through UM 02499, published two awards in 2026 with “eIDAS” in the title: a solution for continuity of trust services (54,849,528 lei, January) and an eIDAS data infrastructure (40,392,000 lei, August). The ministry is not on the provider list of 28 September 2026.

## Who buys together with whom

UM 0929 is listed first among the buyers in 84 award notices worth over one million lei. In 19 of them other bodies are named beside it, eleven in all. Pick a body to see what they bought together.

### Three purchases from 2026

**109,907,900 lei.**  A framework agreement for security operations centres (SOC) and mobile data centres, on behalf of seven bodies: UM 0929, UM 0296, the Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE), the Special Telecommunications Service (STS), the Ministry of Defence (UM 02499), the General Directorate for Internal Protection (DGPI) and the Protection and Guard Service (SPP). Winner: LOGIC COMPUTER. Contract of 30 May 2026. Procedure: negotiated without prior publication. [CAN1171416](https://e-licitatie.ro/pub/notices/ca-notices/view-c/100640678).

**668,000,866 lei.**  The cybersecurity system of the PNRR project to protect public and private ICT infrastructure with aspects critical to national security (component C7, investment I12). UM 0929 and UM 0296 bought together. Open tender, contract notice of 20 March 2025. Winning bidders: Digi Romania S.A. and LOGIC COMPUTER. Contract of 30 January 2026. [CAN1162528](https://e-licitatie.ro/pub/notices/ca-notices/view-c/100636614).

**196,000,000 lei.**  A framework agreement for a platform to evaluate local language models specialised in cybersecurity. UM 0929 and UM 0296. Winner: Digi Romania. Contract of 30 May 2026. Procedure: negotiated without prior publication. [CAN1171417](https://e-licitatie.ro/pub/notices/ca-notices/view-c/100632484).

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