The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights is concerned about the use of facial recognition for law enforcement and border management operations. In a report published on 27 November, it recalls a series of key principles designed to protect fundamental rights.
Recent developments
This report comes at a time when law enforcement authorities are increasing tests in Berlin, Nice and London and at Amsterdam, Dublin and Paris airports. The French State is about to unveil its ‘Alicem’ application, which will allow French citizens to create a digital and biometric identity in order to use facial recognition to identify themselves on the State's official websites, in particular.
A few days ago, the airline Iberia announced that it would offer its customers the possibility of boarding one of its flights using facial recognition via its mobile application.
Key principles
In its report, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights takes note of these different trends. Therefore, it calls for a “clear and detailed legal framework” to regulate the deployment and use of facial recognition technologies, determining when their use is “necessary and proportionate”. It said that it was ready to consider the use of facial recognition “in exceptional cases” such as to combat terrorism or to detect missing people and victims of crime, but stressed that in other cases - for example, during demonstrations - this could have a deterrent effect, preventing people from exercising their freedom of assembly or association.
It also stresses the importance of distinguishing the processing of facial images for verification and identification purposes, as the risk of interference with fundamental rights is higher in the latter case. Finally, the report pointed out that this technology has a certain margin of error, which should not be ignored.
Link to the report: http://bit.ly/2rx5FF6 (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)