European parliament says it will not use facial recognition tech | Hacker News Reader

European parliament says it will not use facial recognition tech

theguardian.com

95 pointsdc35239 comments

One could interpret this headline as 'misleading' : The parliament is not speaking on general policy, but only on the application of the technology on themselves ( the MEPs ).

Whereas Australia has blown right through the discussion and enabled facial recognition without public discourse.

I just found out a close suburb (East Perth) has 30-60 government run facial recognition cameras being installed with this being pushed this year to the entire Perth city area.

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-19/face-tracking-tech...

There is a reason Australia is the guinea pig of the western nations for erosion of rights and privacy tests to see how far we can be contained and pushed.

Because Australians are the most passive of all peoples across the world and are historically the easiest population to control.

But once the five eyes work out their tech and policy here they will push it out to the rest of the world.

We are the control group.

https://www.afr.com/technology/five-eyes-fears-rise-over-aus...

Australia’s population is so passive that we have passed extremely terrifying laws that now the five eyes use to bypass their own countries laws.

Australia today. UK and USA tomorrow.

It is good to see that large scale surveillance is rejected. But I know it is important to stay vigilant. The EU certainly has an ambition to be more attractive as a location for tech, but I think surveillance and security technologies have a high amount of grifters and should not be encouraged.

No it is not rejected. This is only about EU parliament building. In fact, I would like facial recognition to be used over there, so we know which EU MP is meeting which lobbyists, for me this is would be a legitimate usecase of such technology.

It certainly makes more sense to employ surveillance on officials instead of the whole public, but I would be cautious as well.

Achieving transparency requires meticulous checks whereas video cameras only serve as a cheap distraction. Neither public servants nor lobbyists would be stupid enough to be affected, same goes for criminals for that matter, and while I do think that public figures need to make concessions to their privacy in some cases, it doesn't have to be unnecessarily excessive.

I'd rather we had a well funded press that could apply journalistic skills to uncovering the truth

> It is good to see that large scale surveillance is rejected.

Where in this article do you see a rejection of large scale surveillance?

In that they will have severe problems in justifying or even allowing this kind of surveillance for anything, since they themselves don't want to be subjected to it. It is pretty important since it acknowledges that there can be rejection of it without stating any reason. For now, I am very happy with that. But as I said, vigilance is still necessary.

Been through an airport in the EU or going to the EU lately?

That's not up to the EU. Thats up to the individual countries.

The EU is a memebership of collective countries, not some all powerfull entity of controlling its memebers and telling them what to do.. It's not the same as the US federal system.

That is true, but it’s also the case that EU countries agree to collective rule-making in some cases. If the member states agree, following the established process, that facial recognition should be disallowed throughout the EU then that’s something that can totally happen. Just like GDPR.

All member states would need to agree to implement the banning of facial recognition for it to be effective. Again this is a descision which the members must agree to. And it is certainly possible. But there is not 1 entity who decides for all members.

How about all the mass surveillance programs the EU has been funding for decades that do use facial recognition?

What mass surveillance programs has the EU (not individual member states, like the UK or Germany) been funding "for decades"? The EU doesn't even have an intelligence service. The only entity I could be thinking about is Frontex.

Not really. Visitors from outside the EU's "trusted sphere" will have their fingerprints taken at the border. Even though the EU is a membership of collective countries, this all-powerful entity is controlling its members and telling them to do this.

Likewise, using facial recognition technology on airports is exactly within scope of the EU to mandate (or outlaw).

> this all-powerful entity is controlling its members and telling them to do this.

It's members make up the rules.. To get a facial recognition ban, all members must agree to implement it. Then it becomes part of the EU standards.. Members agree to it, then implement it. Its is NOT: "Well you have to implement this because you're a member of the EU" - It does not work that way.

You do know that most rules must be agreed unanimously, and every country has a veto?

Additionally, the borders aren't even managed by EU. There is shengen travel area, where countries agreed to remove internal borders and come up with one set of rules for external borders. This is entirely separate, and UK for example did not sign up to it.

> controlling its memebers and telling them what to do

This is exactly what EU directives and EU regulations are for. Every time the EU accepts either one of those, all members must follow them.

EDIT: I'm confused that this gets downvoted. The EU has the power to force laws upon its members (not in every policy area, but in plenty) and it does so frequently. If that's not "telling member states what to do" then what is?

> Every time the EU accepts either one of those, all members must follow them.

Who do you think accepts them in the EU ? ... Hint : (All Members)

> EU directives and EU regulations are for.

Actually what they're for is to ensure everyone who is a members gets the fair shake, thats why those that we have have all been agreed by all members. And our Single market is pretty great. Not perfect, it will continue to improve by the work and effort of us members together, but it's unimaginably better than none.

It's also extremely irresponsible to simply want to throw the toys out of the cot and not offer any real solutions; i.e : Brexit.

There was no exit plan, just a lot of chest pounding and falsehoods about the EU. Thats why it took so long for the UK.

Lets see how it plays out, I know all of Europe will be paying attention.

Just yesterday had my face scanned at an EU airport. It appears that this is more do do with using facial recognition in public spaces (streets, town squares etc).

I does not mean there is no facial recognition deployed. I live in Marseille, France, and facial recognition is currently beeing deployey all over the city.

In fact, not only facial recognition, but posture recognition, walk recognition, etc. Marseille and Nice are two test-towns for global french deployment...

, yet.

As usual, politicians start to claim privacy rights when it comes to them, and yet this technology is already being tested throughout major European cities.

The hypocrisy is real.

Well to be honest those politicians will also be affected by the facial recognition tech used in the cities they live in just as any other citizen. If I were them I'd actively try to buck the trend not just wash my hands of it.

But I think the point they want to make is that they did not mandate using it. Something along the lines of "you can use it but don't blame me for setting the trend" I'd guess.

the EU allows its countries to pursue their own policies, this is not hypocrisy, its simply clarifying that the EU itself will not be implementing this technology.

What individual countries do is not up to the EU parliment.

Countries are supposed to implement the directives but some countries play fast and loose in how they implement directives.

eg TUPE (employment law) is quite different in Spain Vs the UK

It is true some members dont always play by the rules, even something as significant as GDPR has questionable implementation coverage even in Belgium. I know myself Ireland has some questionable Tax issues which dont really help the other countries get a fair playing field.

Enforcement is an issue, it wasnt really imagined that you would agree to something as a group and then walk away and say : "Well forget that".

Interesting. I've been living in France for about 8 years now (I'm a US expat) and I really need to understand more about the EU's functions and abilities. I understand that there are different legislative bodies of Europe, but not sure how each applies. Do you have any material to help educate me on the subject?

Thanks for the insight!

https://europa.eu/european-union/law_en

The europa.eu site has ever piece of information available, it can be a bit wordy and legal but there is usually references to bodies and the precedents they have taken etc.

> I understand that there are different legislative bodies of Europe, but not sure how each applies.

As a very crude analogy with the US, you could view EU parliament as federal government and country parliaments (and governments) as state governments.

Laws at the EU level are applicable to all countries, but individual countries have a lot of leeway in in implementation, enforcement and their own laws (as long as the don't contradict EU laws).

>As a very crude analogy with the US, you could view EU parliament as federal government and country parliaments (and governments) as state governments.

I think this is not correct because from what I know in US you don't ever need unanimity to pass federal laws but let me know if I am wrong.

That's why it's a crude analogy :) The devil is in the details, as always.

Did you read the article at all?

The European Union is already planning to introduce a temporary ban on facial recognition in public spaces - PRECISELY because the technology is being rolled out throughout European cities without first assessing the impact on rights such as privacy.

The story is about a leaked draft of a plan to introduce the same technology on the parliament itself - which would be inconsistent with the previous point.

I don't see any hypocrisy here.

> The story is about a leaked draft of a plan to introduce the same technology on the parliament itself

I did, and that's what I mean. They don't want it in the parliament and yet the subway station I use every day has facial recognition system in place, there is even a sign that says "it's for your safety". I'll believe in a ban when they'll take it down.

What part of

"The European commission is expected to announce the ban this month, covering the use of the technology in stations, stadiums and shopping centres and lasting three to five years, to allow regulators time to assess the impact of the fast-developing technology."

is confusing you?

If you had followed the links, you'd know that there is a draft for the ban circulating since at least early January, and is due to come into effect sometime in February.

Again: this is being rushed through precisely because of behaviors such as the one you describe.

I fail to understand what there is to be outraged about here. Your exact complaint is in the process of being addressed (assuming you live in the EU).

I get the impression he is saying it would have never been an issue for them if it wasn't ever going to be implemented at parliament specifically. It was not an issue to use it on every body else. If they could get away with it they would probably ban it from being used on themselves and continue to implement it everywhere else.

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