The use of facial recognition technology could increase across the European Union despite efforts to regulate it under the bloc-wide Artificial Intelligence Act.
Last December, EU negotiators reached a preliminary agreement on the AI Act, a world-first attempt to regulate the emerging technology that includes new rules on the use of biometric identification systems such as facial recognition.
But civil society organisations fear there are loopholes in the planned law.
« They have set very broad conditions for the police to use these systems. What we fear is that this will have a legitimising effect, » said Ella Jakubowska of Reclaim Your Face, a coalition calling to ban biometric mass surveillance.