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Comment by the_mitsuhiko | Hacker News Reader

Fun fact: this is quite likely illegal to do in the EU. If it should or should not be legal is a different question, but my understanding of present day law makes this not permissible.

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Which law makes this illegal? Presumably the live stream is setup by the flemish government themselves, and they're all public figures acting in a public capacity. Maybe there is something else here, or some detail of Belgian law, but from the outside it doesn't seem there is much of a privacy argument.

Facial detection is processing of article 9 GDPR data which requires explicit consent.

There's a brand new AI law too. You'd likely need explicit consent of these people to have their personal data (face) processed by AI.

Interesting, can you expand a bit on what particular laws you think it violates?

It's not illegal, but unlawful for data controllers to process such personal data without free permission. But in this case there's likely an exception in GDPR article 85, for "For processing carried out for journalistic purposes or the purpose of academic artistic or literary expression" [1].

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj/eng#art_85

That does not give that right. It just asks states to carve out protections for journalism. Biometric data is very strictly regulated by the GDPR. The exceptions are listed in article 9.

Oh I can use your personal private data for artistic expression?!?

Doubtful.

What exactly is illegal?

Would you point out why so?

And also think of the children!!1

GDPR "news reporting" exemption probably applies.

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