Facial recognition technology is under fire again in Europe as digital and human rights organisations launched a petition calling for a ban on biometric surveillance in public spaces.
The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) calls on the European Commission to regulate the use of biometic technologies, arguing that technologies including facial recognition can contravene human rights and violate GDPR.
Reclaim Your Face, a coalition of rights groups, wants biometric mass surveillance banned and needs to collect 1 million signatures in at least seven EU countries in the next year in time to force debate and influence new laws being prepared by the European Commission.
The coalition claims to have already collected evidence of “vast and systemic abuses of people’s biometric data across Europe”. It lists mass surveillance in Belgrade, Serbia and biometric surveillance of migrant communities in Como, Italy among dubious practices deployed by authorities across the EU.