EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT CALLS FOR AN EU BAN ON POLICE AND JUDICIAL AUTHORITIES USING FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY IN PUBLIC SPACES

With a majority of 71 votes, and 62 abstentions, the European Parliament, last week, adopted a resolution on “artificial intelligence in criminal law and its use by the police and judicial authorities in criminal matters”. The report calls for a ban on police and judicial authorities using facial recognition technology in the EU, at least in the form of mass surveillance in public spaces. Behind the numbers lies a dispute between, the EPP, who voted against the report, and the other major groups, notably the S&D, Renew Europe and the Greens/EFA. Despite agreeing in principle that AI is a useful tool for law enforcement but must not be allowed to encroach on fundamental rights, the two sides could not agree on what exactly this meant in practice.

The report’s author, Petar Vitanov (S&D, BG), had argued in his presentation in plenary last week that AI has not yet proven to be a reliable tool on its own. Referencing data received by “multiple NGOs”, he cited cases such as being denied social benefit because of faulty AI tools, or people being arrested following wrongful facial recognition, adding that the “victims are always the poor, immigrants, people of colour or Eastern Europeans. I always thought that only happens in the movies.” Danish liberal deputy Karen Melchior said during the debate that “predictive profiling, AI risk assessment and automated decision-making systems are weapons of ‘Math Destruction’”, as they were “as dangerous to our democracy as nuclear bombs are for living creatures and life”. She concluded that “they will destroy the fundamental rights of each citizen to be equal before the law and in the eye of our authorities.”

The report and resolution calls for the ban of private facial recognition databases and predictive policing based on behavioural data. And it calls for the use of biometric data to remotely identify people to be discontinued. EPP members had been less passionate in the debate, with, for Belgian deputy Tom Vandenkendelaere commenting: “We must remain vigilant, but we must not throw out the baby with bathwater”, or the Netherland’s Jeroen Lenaers who stressed the need “to look at opportunities with an open mind”. Pointing to recent successes by law enforcement agencies in Europe, thanks to AI technology, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johanssen pleaded with MEPs: “Don’t put protection of fundamental rights in contradiction to the protection of human lives and of societies. It’s simply not true that we must choose. We are capable of doing both.”