Biometrics
Biometrics refers to the use of analytical tools and devices which capture, record and/or process people’s physical or behavioural data. This can include faces (commonly known as facial recognition), fingerprints, DNA, irises, walking style (gait), voice as well as other characteristics. Under the EU’s data protection laws, this biometric data is especially sensitive. It is linked to our individual identities, and can also reveal protected and intimate information about who we are, where we go, our health status and more. When used to indiscriminately target people in public spaces, to predict behaviours and emotions, or in situations of imbalances of power, biometric surveillance such as facial recognition has been shown to violate a wide range of fundamental rights.
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Reclaim Your Face impact in 2021
A sturdy coalition, research reports, investigations, coordination actions and gathering amazing political support at national and EU level. This was 2021 for the Reclaim Your Face coalition – a year that, despite happening in a pandemic – showed what the power of a united front looks like.
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Italy introduces a moratorium on video surveillance systems that use facial recognition
On 1 December 2021, the Italian Parliament introduced a moratorium on video surveillance systems that use facial recognition technologies. This law introduces, for the first time in an EU Member State, a temporary ban for private entities to use these systems in public places or places accessible to the public. This moratorium is an important achievement: it recognises the dangers posed by technologies such as facial recognition to people's rights and freedoms. The moratorium will be in force until 31 December 2023 at the latest, unless a new law is introduced on the subject of biometric surveillance before that date.
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Press release: European Commission jumps the gun with proposal to add facial recognition to EU-wide police database
The European Commission has put forward a proposal to ‘streamline’ the automated sharing of facial recognition images and other sensitive data by police across the EU. What will be discarded in order to ‘streamline’ the process? Vital safeguards which are designed to protect all of us from state over-reach and authoritarian mass surveillance practices.
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The ICO provisionally issues £17 million fine against facial recognition company Clearview AI
Following EDRi member Privacy International's (PI) submissions before the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), as well as other European regulators, the ICO has announced its provisional intent to fine Clearview AI.
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New German government calls for European ban on biometric mass surveillance
The newly-agreed German government coalition has called for a Europe-wide ban on public facial recognition and other biometric surveillance. This echoes the core demands of the Reclaim Your Face campaign which EDRi has co-led since 2020, through which over 65 civil society groups ask the EU and their national governments to outlaw biometric data mass surveillance.
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Civil society calls on the EU to put fundamental rights first in the AI Act
Today, 30 November 2021, European Digital Rights (EDRi) and 119 civil society organisations launched a collective statement to call for an Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) which foregrounds fundamental rights.
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New RESOURCE PAGE helps supporters BAN biometric mass surveillance
The Reclaim Your Face collective has put together a brand new Resource Page, helping all activists spread the word and take action easily, online, offline – at all times, wherever they are.
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Do no harm? How the case of Afghanistan sheds light on the dark practice of biometric intervention
In August 2021, as US military forces exited Afghanistan, the Taliban seized facial recognition systems, highlighting just how a failure to protect people’s privacy can tangibly threaten their physical safety and human rights. Far from being good tools which fell into the wrong hands, the very existence of these systems is part of broader structures of data extraction and exploitation spanning continents and centuries, with a history wrapped up in imperialism, colonialism and control.
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AI Regulation: The EU should not give in to the surveillance industry
Although it claims to protect our liberties, the recent European Commission’s legislative proposal on artificial intelligence (AI) promotes the accelerated development of all aspects of AI, in particular for security purposes.
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Big brother at the Prague airport. The state refuses to explain how the biometric camera system works
When Václav Mach, collaborator of the Czech digital-legal organization, an EDRi member, Iuridicum Remedium (IuRe) and law student at the University of Olomouc, asked the state for more detailed information on the use of smart biometric cameras at Prague's Václav Havel Airport, he obtained just general phrases. "They kept secret what they could. Their non-transparency doesn’t add to their credibility,“ he says in an interview with HlídacíPes.org. The article below is a summary of the more extensive interview, translated from Czech into English by EDRi member IuRe.
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No biometric surveillance for Italian students during exams
In September 2021 the Italian Data Protection Authority (DPA) fined Luigi Bocconi University €200 000 for using Respondus, a proctoring software, without sufficiently informing students of the processing of their personal data and, among other violations, for processing their biometric data without a legal basis. Bocconi is a private University based in Milan and during the COVID-19 pandemic introduced Respondus tools to monitor students during remote exams.
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EDRi urges Portugal government to oppose proposed video surveillance law
EDRi member and Reclaim Your Face lead organisation D3 (Defesa Dos Direitos Digitais) are raising awareness of how the Portuguese government’s new proposed video surveillance and facial recognition law – which Ministers are trying to rush through the Parliament - amounts to illiberal biometric mass surveillance. It also endangers the very foundations of democracy on which the Republic of Portugal rests.
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