Data protectionists see this as a great danger to a free society. In a resolution, the EU Parliament is now speaking out against biometric surveillance with a narrow majority.
The EU Parliament has spoken out against the biometric mass surveillance of people. Automatic facial recognition in public spaces and border controls must be permanently banned, according to a resolution that the MPs adopted on Wednesday with a relatively narrow majority.
Only citizens suspected of having committed a crime should be monitored in this way. However, the resolution is not legally binding.
“Biometric mass surveillance wrongly suspects a large number of innocent citizens, systematically discriminates against underrepresented groups and endangers our free and diverse society,” said Pirate MP Patrick Breyer, who worked closely on the report for the Green Group. Large parts of the conservative EPP parliamentary group, which also includes the CDU and CSU, voted against the resolution.
In the search for criminals, artificial intelligence should also only be allowed to be used under strict human supervision, according to the will of the EU Parliament. There is a risk that AI systems in law enforcement will lead to discrimination against certain groups of people, the resolution said. Artificial intelligence, which is used to automatically identify people, makes mistakes particularly often with people belonging to ethnic minorities, with gays, lesbians and trans people, with the elderly and with women.
According to the parliamentarians, private databases for facial recognition are to be banned. Such a database was set up by the controversial US company Clearview AI, which compiled billions of images of people from the Internet for this purpose.
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