EU Privacy Watchdogs Demand Total Ban on Public Facial Recognition
Europe's top privacy regulators urge a complete ban on facial recognition in all publicly accessible spaces, arguing the technology destroys anonymity. The advisers push for stricter rules than the European Commission's recent proposal.
Europe's top privacy regulators call for a complete ban on facial recognition technology in all publicly accessible spaces, including shops and stadiums. The European Data Protection Board and the European Data Protection Supervisor issue this joint statement as a direct challenge to a recent proposal from the European Commission.
The Commission's current plan classifies real-time remote biometric identification as high-risk and suggests strict safeguards along with a general ban for law enforcement. However, the privacy watchdogs argue that this approach is not nearly strict enough to protect citizens.
These regulators warn that deploying live facial recognition in public areas effectively ends anonymity and severely threatens fundamental rights and freedoms. While the EDPB and EDPS do not write the laws themselves, their strong intervention sends a clear message to lawmakers to heavily restrict artificial intelligence to create a human-centric legal framework.