Ban governments from using AI to conduct mass surveillance of citizens

But using these systems for mass domestic surveillance is incompatible with democratic values. AI-driven mass surveillance presents serious, novel risks to our fundamental liberties. To the extent that such surveillance is currently legal, this is only because the law has not yet…

Second, we believe that mass domestic surveillance of Americans constitutes a violation of fundamental rights.

Mass surveillance is wrong. It enables the potential for unchecked state power and control over individuals, obstructs the separation of powers, and affects all our rights.

Fully autonomous weapons systems and Orwellian AI-enabled domestic mass surveillance are affronts to our dignity and liberty. [...] Domestic mass surveillance of US citizens is a red line that should never be crossed. [...] Our safety and basic rights must not be at the mercy of …

Mass surveillance of American citizens is unacceptable.

It is fueling mass surveillance, disinformation on social media, and enabling bias, including from a gender perspective.

It may be used for a very narrow watch list today, but there are very good reasons to think it’ll expand over time.

Being subject to the algorithmic use of surveillance technologies moves the dial towards a 'suspicion by default' society, where innocent parties, going about their everyday lives, could have their rights trampled by AI classification.

We have seen abuse of surveillance powers throughout history, but we have never seen surveillance powers that are as pervasive as what large tech companies have today. [...] Scanning private messages for criminal behaviour could begin to extend into scanning private messages for …

Perhaps the greatest threat posed by technologies that fall under the umbrella of artificial intelligence comes from their ability to facilitate the mass surveillance of populations. Advances in machine learning in particular have significantly reduced the cost of processing huge…

The Bill of Rights is not a suggestion, and Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless searches conducted by the government are not optional. The Surveillance Accountability Act requires government employees to first obtain a warrant based on probable cause before searching…

Our bill forces the government to obey the Fourth Amendment in the digital age. No more warrantless searches of your phone, cloud data, bank records, or internet history. No more hiding behind the ‘third-party doctrine.’ No more creepy warrantless facial recognition or tracking. …

EFF urges Congress to take two immediate steps: First, enact the Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act, which passed the House of Representatives in 2024 by a vote of 219–199. This bipartisan bill would prohibit the government from purchasing digital data on individuals it would o…

Big Tech has built a massive surveillance economy to track, package and sell deeply detailed information about our movements, purchases, preferences, and relationships. Now, out of control federal agencies are buying this data to evade constitutional protections and track and sur…

Attorney General Anthony G. Brown joined a coalition of 17 attorneys general urging Congress to take immediate action to halt federal agencies’ use of commercially purchased data and artificial intelligence (AI) tools that enable mass surveillance of Americans without judicial, l…

Strictly prohibit arbitrary, indiscriminate and mass surveillance used for law enforcement purposes, including biometric and AI applications, such as facial recognition technology, AI systems that create or expand facial recognition databases through the untargeted scraping of fa…

Some forms of AI surveillance must be banned altogether, including highly invasive spyware.

Facial recognition AI is a dangerous technology that is fundamentally incompatible with human rights. Facial recognition creates a broad, warrantless hoard of surveillance data that can instantly be weaponized for intimidation and oppression. It has no place in a free society and…

It’s past time for the federal government to end its use of this abusive surveillance technology. A great place to start is its use for immigration enforcement, given ICE and CBP’s utter disdain for the law. Face surveillance in the hands of the government is a fundamentally harm…

We don't want mass surveillance, we don't want social scoring, we don't want predictive policing in the European Union, full stop.

Biometric surveillance poses an urgent threat to our fundamental rights. Facial recognition and other biometric surveillance technologies have been used by authoritarian regimes around the world to target journalists, protestors, and marginalized communities; they are increasingl…

Since Congress gave ICE and Border Patrol hundreds of billions of dollars in unnecessary funding last year, the Trump administration has doubled down on the use of shadowy surveillance technology to supercharge its lawless and violent immigration operations. The Department of Hom…

For years, I’ve been ringing the alarm bells about the dangers of a national surveillance state built on facial recognition technology. Now, we’re seeing Trump’s lawless federal agents deploy this technology on our streets across the nation as he tries to tighten his authoritaria…

As civil rights advocates, we have and will always stand against mass domestic surveillance and technology weaponized against our communities, especially those historically overpoliced and wrongfully targeted by the government.

As Santa Cruz rightly recognized, predictive policing and facial recognition are dangerous, racially biased technologies that should never be used by our government. [...] Lawmakers across the country have a responsibility to step up and dismantle surveillance systems that have …

I have grave concerns that banning technology until it is legislated will choke innovation, it will drive genuine use cases away, and as technology is always developing, are we not in danger of ‘tomorrow never comes’ when it comes to legislation keeping up?

When I was in justice, my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times. Similarly, in the world of pol…

Prohibited practices shall include AI-enabled social scoring, indiscriminate biometric mass surveillance in public spaces without lawful authorization, and manipulative or deceptive AI systems that exploit vulnerabilities of individuals or groups.

JUSTICE proposes a restrictive, exclusive statutory basis: these technologies may not be used for policing or law enforcement unless they meet the framework’s criteria.

The new legal framework must include a meaningful regulatory regime which operationalises principles such as necessity, responsibility, proportionality, transparency, accountability and lawfulness. These principles should then structure and constrain law enforcement powers, enabl…

The use of live facial recognition in our public spaces is an extraordinary expansion of state power that currently exists in a legal vacuum. We are not Luddites on these Benches; we recognise the utility of technology, but we must ensure that live facial recognition is a targete…

I am very concerned that having police authorities and police officers exercising a pure discretion, without any statutory guidance or code of practice, may well fail that legal test of prescribed by law, because of the uncertainty and the excess of discretion.

We are talking today about live facial recognition at protests and why the police must not be allowed to use it until Parliament has agreed a clear and democratic code of practice.

It would prohibit live facial recognition when police impose conditions under the Public Order Act unless and until Parliament had approved a new statutory code of practice.

Secondly, this may surprise the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, but I agree that there should be more regulation of its use, and that it should be regulation by Parliament, not by the police.