Comment by Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

The use of emotion recognition technologies, such as polygraphs, to try to infer how a person feels, what they think, or the veracity of what they are saying, is not only technologically flawed but also highly likely to result in discriminatory, bias, and stereotyped outcomes and interfere with freedom of thought and therefore provides another example of a digital border technology which should be refrained from use and banned. As also discussed in this study, remote biometric technologies raise serious concerns with regard to their proportionality as well as possible discriminatory outcomes from their use. At borders, their use may lead to identification, detention, and removal. Against this background, aligning with the growing number of decisions by various legislative and administrative bodies to ban remote biometric technologies in public spaces, States should refrain from using such technologies at borders.