#ReclaimYourFace
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The #PaperBagSociety challenge
The #PaperBagSociety is a social media challenge part of the #ReclaimYourFace campaign that invites everyone to share online the impact of living life with a paperbag on the head. With it, we aim to raise awareness of how ridiculous is to avoid facial recognition technologies in public spaces and why we need to build an alternative future, free from biometric mass surveillance.
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EDRi joins 178 organisations in global call to ban biometric surveillance
From protesters taking to the streets in Slovenia, to the subways of São Paulo; from so-called “smart cities” in India, to children entering French high schools; from EU border control experiments, to the racialised over-policing of people of colour in the US. In each of these examples, people around the world are increasingly and pervasively being subjected to toxic biometric surveillance. This is why EDRi has joined the global Ban Biometric Surveillance coalition, to build on our work in Europe as part of the powerful Reclaim Your Face campaign.
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The urgent need to #reclaimyourface
The rise of automated video surveillance is often touted as a quick, easy, and efficient solution to complex societal problems. In reality, roll-outs of facial recognition and other biometric mass surveillance tools constitute a systematic invasion into people’s fundamental rights to privacy and data protection. Like with uses of toxic chemicals, these toxic uses of biometric surveillance technologies need to be banned across Europe.
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New win against biometric mass surveillance in Germany
In November 2020, reporters at Netzpolitik.org revealed that the city of Karlsruhe wanted to establish a smart video surveillance system in the city centre. The plan involved an AI system that would analyse the behaviour of passers-by and automatically identify conspicuous behaviour. After the intervention of EDRi-member CCC the project was buried in May 2021.
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Can a COVID-19 face mask protect you from facial recognition technology too?
Mass facial recognition risks our collective futures and shapes us into fear-driven societies of suspicion. This got folks at EDRi and Privacy International brainstorming. Could the masks that we now wear to protect each other from Coronavirus also protect our anonymity, preventing the latest mass facial recognition systems from identifying us?
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Initial wins in Italy just two months after the launch of Reclaim Your Face
Last week, the #ReclaimYourFace campaign reached two important milestones at the national level. On Friday April 16th the Italian Data Protection Authority (DPA) rejected the SARI Real Time facial recognition system acquired by the police saying that the system lacks a legal basis and, as designed, it would implement a form of mass surveillance.
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New AI law proposal calls out harms of biometric mass surveillance, but does not resolve them
On 21 April 2021, the European Commission put forward a proposal for a new law on artificial intelligence. With it, the Commission acknowledged some of the numerous threats biometric mass surveillance poses for our freedoms and dignity. However, despite its seemingly good intentions, the proposed law falls seriously short on our demands and does not in fact impose a ban on most cases of biometric mass surveillance – as urged by EDRi and the Reclaim Your Face coalition.
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Evidence shows a European future that is dystopian: #ReclaimYourFace now to protect your city
The latest evidence shows that biometric mass surveillance is rapidly being developed and deployed in Europe without a proper legal basis or respect for our agency as self-determined and autonomous individuals. No one is safe, as our most sensitive data like our faces, eyes, skin, palm veins, and fingerprints are being tracked, traced and analysed on social media, in the park, on the bus, or at work.
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European Commission must ban biometric mass surveillance practices, say 56 civil society groups
On 1 April, a coalition of 56 human rights, digital rights and social justice organisations sent a letter to European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, ahead of the long-awaited proposal for new EU laws on artificial intelligence. The coalition is calling on the Commissioner to prohibit uses of biometrics that enable mass surveillance or other dangerous and harmful uses of AI.
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No faces left to hack: #ReclaimYourFace Now!
We cannot let power-hungry and profit-orientated technologies manipulate our future, take away our dignity and treat us like walking, breathing barcodes. We have the right to exercise our autonomy and self-determination free from abusive practices undermining our agency. The Reclaim Your Face’s ECI empowers Europeans to move and shape the public debate on the use of these AI-powered biometric technologies. The EU has the chance to show that people sit at the center of its values, by taking the lead to ban biometric mass surveillance that endangers our freedoms, democracies and futures.
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#ReclaimYourFace and help prevent the end of privacy as we know it!
Facial recognition and other biometric surveillance threatens the core of our right to privacy and data protection by surveilling and judging us. This is why across Europe, we’re calling to ban biometric mass surveillance practices. We’re counting on EU citizens to sign our ECI petition, and on everyone to spread the word and make sure that European governments cannot ignore our demand.
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ECI: putting people’s voices before corporate greed
On 17 February 2021, EDRi with a coalition of 40 human rights and social justice groups launched a unique, officially-recognised EU petition, called a “European Citizens’ Initiative” (ECI). Here, we explain why and how this ECI is a powerful tool for our Reclaim Your Face campaign that aims to ban biometric mass surveillance, as well as for our wider European advocacy against harmful uses of artificial intelligence-based technologies.
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