In Wednesday's vote in the European Parliament, 377 deputies they supported a resolution which limits the use of facial recognition by law enforcement. 248 voted against and 62 abstained, for the record.
“AI-based identification systems already misidentify minority ethnic groups, LGBTI people, older people and women at higher rates. This is particularly worrying in the context of surveillance by law enforcement and the judiciary,” read a statement from parliament.
Opaque algorithms, inquisitorial surveillance
To ensure that fundamental rights are respected when using these technologies, algorithms should be transparent, traceable and sufficiently documented. Where possible, public authorities should use open source software to be more transparent.
EU Parliament Statement
It is good news that most EU political representatives have made this assessment. Who doesn't want the use of facial recognition in automatic mass surveillance of people in public. Monitoring should be limited to only those believed to have broken the law. Datasets accumulated by private companies should also be banned, such as Clearview ai, to identify citizens. It would be useful to prevent, in truth, even the systems that allow policemen to predict offenses from people's behavior and background.
Here is what the EU Parliament said about facial recognition and mass surveillance:
"Fundamental rights are unconditional," he says Pyotr Vitanov, MEP representing the Bulgarian Socialist Party. “For the first time ever, we are calling for a moratorium on the deployment of facial recognition systems for surveillance and law enforcement purposes, as the technology has proven ineffective and often leads to discriminatory results.”
We are clearly against predictive policing based on the use of artificial intelligence and any biometric data processing that leads to mass surveillance. This is a great victory for all European citizens.
Pyotr Vitanov, MEP
The vote is not binding, and for this reason it cannot directly lead to any legislative change. It was promoted to "feel the pulse" of the European Parliament, and understand whether members could support upcoming laws such as the AI Act. Among the intentions is also to ban biometric data at border controls to track travelers in Europe.
The failures of a still incomplete technology
The growth of these surveillance algorithms has happened very rapidly, and with an incomplete data set, to be generous. Facial recognition discrimination is commonplace (think of the person identified as a “monkey” by a Facebook algorithm). People of color are currently much more likely to be misidentified by the facial recognition authentication mechanism. And there is one that is hot and cold: it is the Uber algorithm.
A Black Uber driver in the UK, who lost his job after being blocked from the ride-hailing app when its facial recognition system failed to identify him, is taking legal action against the tech giant. He will be supported by the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB), which has called for a 24-hour strike to demand changes to the modus operandi.
“Uber's continued use of a facial recognition algorithm that is ineffective on people of color is discriminatory,” he said Henry Chango Lopez, general secretary of the IWGB.
