This year the EU will re-elect its parliament. That doesn’t change the fact that some of the most politically controversial projects are already decided in advance. In addition to the much-discussed cash problem (keyword: a cash limit is being introduced), this also affects biometric surveillance.
“In recent years, the European Union has introduced and passed a large number of legislative proposals in which the component of monitoring, controlling and controlling people plays a very important role. This is also the case with the new AI law. It is being sold to EU citizens as a law that seeks to create trustworthy artificial intelligence. However, another form of mass surveillance is emerging.
The so-called AI Act is currently only known in an English version. It bans some AI applications such as biometric categorization systems, reading facial images from the Internet, emotion recognition in the workplace or social assessments.
However, this cannot hide the fact that the exceptions to these bans take up much more space and it is precisely these exceptions for state surveillance and for the use of biometric identification systems (RBI) in publicly accessible spaces for law enforcement purposes that should make us sit up and take notice.
Thousands of unsuspected people are declared potential criminals and treated like them
These exceptions include the targeted search for victims of, for example, kidnapping, human trafficking or sexual exploitation. The attempt to combat a specific and current terrorist threat is also an exception. Likewise, the location and identification of people who are suspected of having committed one of the aforementioned crimes.
This all sounds quite acceptable at first, because what citizen doesn’t want to be protected from murder, rape or terrorism. The problem, however, is that certain dangers can easily be constructed and even if the danger is real and concrete, only one person is wanted, but all other innocent people are placed under general suspicion.
Dr. Parick Preyer, a member of the Pirate Party, writes about this in his blog: “One wanted, all monitored? (…) The supposed exceptions are window dressing – thousands of suspects of the crimes mentioned in the law are constantly being sought by judge’s orders.” There are also legitimate doubts about the meaning of the measures, because: “In reality, not a single terrorist has been identified with biometric mass surveillance of public spaces found, not a single attack was prevented, instead it led to countless arrests of innocent people and up to 99% false suspicions. The law legitimizes and normalizes a culture of mistrust. It is leading Europe into a dystopian future of a suspicious high-tech surveillance state.”