Civil Society Coalition Urges EU Parliament to Ban Biometric Mass Surveillance
A coalition of 53 organizations calls on EU lawmakers to outlaw biometric mass surveillance in the Artificial Intelligence Act. The group warns that failing to ban these systems destroys public anonymity and threatens fundamental human rights.
A global coalition of 53 civil society organizations calls on Members of the European Parliament to ban biometric mass surveillance in the upcoming Artificial Intelligence Act. The coalition stresses that the EU must not legitimize dangerous practices like remote biometric identification in publicly accessible spaces, as this sets a dangerous global precedent for AI technology.
The group warns that deploying facial recognition and similar systems in public destroys the possibility of anonymity and turns community spaces into sites of mass surveillance where everyone is treated as a suspect. This constant tracking directly undermines essential rights, including privacy, freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and non-discrimination, ultimately creating a chilling effect on public protest.
These concerns are not merely hypothetical, as the coalition points to real-world abuses where authoritarian governments use facial recognition to systematically persecute minority groups and suppress political opponents. Without an outright ban on these remote biometric technologies, EU lawmakers risk enabling a future where fundamental democratic freedoms are permanently compromised.