
European parliament says it will not use facial recognition tech - dc352
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/european-parliament-insists-it-will-not-use-facial-recognition-tech
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the-dude
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 ).

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josephagoss
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...](https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-19/face-tracking-technology-
rolled-out-across-east-perth/10636476)

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...](https://www.afr.com/technology/five-eyes-fears-rise-over-aussie-
encryption-laws-20190221-h1bj6f)

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.

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raxxorrax
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.

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piokoch
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.

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raxxorrax
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.

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

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bilekas
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.

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tremon
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).

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bilekas
> 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.

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kaazhan
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...

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pzumk
, yet.

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weystrom
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.

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bilekas
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.

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lprd
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!

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dmitriid
> 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).

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simion314
>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.

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

