The Consultative Committee of the “Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to the Automatic Processing of Personal Data” (Convention 108) published strict guidelines on facial recognition on Thursday 28 January (https://bit.ly/3t5gd9W ).
It calls for its prohibition when determining a person’s skin colour, religious beliefs, sex, ethnic origin, age, health or social status. In order to avoid discrimination, this prohibition is expected to be extended to “affect recognition” technologies designed to identify emotions, character traits, mental health, etc.
The clandestine use of facial recognition by law enforcement agencies can only be justified if it is “documented before the covert use” and reserved for cases of an “imminent and substantial risk to public security”.
This publication comes on the occasion of World Data Protection Day, the 40th anniversary of Convention 108, supplemented by a Protocol adopted in 2018 but still not in force. The Secretary General of the Council of Europe calls on Member States to ratify it to enable “modernised Convention to meet the new challenges of the digital age”. (VL)