Europe: banned from surveillance with facial recognition

Europe voted for a total ban of the use of Facial recognition for the mass surveillance. According to the European Parliament, the risk to “privacy and human dignity” is too high to use this technology in public places.

Europe votes a ban on the use of facial recognition for surveillance

The control through artificial intelligence of all citizens in a public place does not respect privacy and dignity, violating universal rights. European legislators should pass a permanent ban on the use of this technology for automatic recognition of individuals in public places. Citizens should only be monitored if suspected of a crime.

Parliament also has the use of private databases is banned for facial recognition, such as those of the controversial service ClearView that some European police were already using. In addition, parliament wants to outlaw “predictive police”, which use behavioral data to monitor individuals who could commit crimes. Me too” assignment of scores to citizens on the basis of their behaviors and personality to assess people’s trustworthiness should become illegal.

These decisions are part of the larger project to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in potentially dangerous areas. However, several lawmakers and privacy associations say the legislation does not go far enough in protecting citizens.

In recent months, Europe has also come out in favor of using human operators to make legal decisions, even when the assistance of an algorithm is expected. For example, a human judge it should always ratify the sentence, evaluating with object criteria whether the sentence commissioned by artificial intelligence is proportional and just. Some MPs would like to though eliminate its use entirely.

Confrontation with artificial intelligence becomes essential for the near future and Europe appears to be taking this challenge seriously. We will keep you posted.