Comment by Patrick Breyer

„This proposal would justify the permanent and ubiquitious deployment of face surveillance to look for the thousands of ‚victims‘, ‚threats‘ and suspects of ‚serious crime‘ that are wanted at any time. We need to prevent a China-style dystopian future of biometric mass surveillance in Europe! This technology is being abused by authoritarian countries such as Russia or Iran, is this the direction our governments want to take us? With error rates (false positives) of up to 99%, ineffective facial surveillance technology bares no resemblance to the targeted search that proponents are trying to present it as. There is not a single example of real-time biometric surveillance preventing a terrorist attack, finding „missing children“ or other such events. We must stand up against biometric mass surveillance in our public spaces because these technologies wrongfully report large numbers of innocent citizens, systematically discriminate against under-represented groups and have a chilling effect on a free and diverse society. Legislation allowing for indiscriminate mass surveillance has consistently been annulled by the courts due to their incompatibility with fundamental rights. The European Parliament will need to fight to have this ban implemented in the AI Act!“