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Close Up: Your ID is Your Face

Project description

Legal framework and boundaries of face recognition use in public areas

The growing use of Artificial Intelligence-based technologies for security purposes, such as applications enabling face-recognition in public spaces, has become a subject of growing concern. The technology can make mistakes, be skin-colour or gender-biased, and it can also pose a danger to personal freedoms (including the right to privacy). Yet, the technologies are deployed at a breakneck pace around the world and lack specific regulatory frameworks. The EU-funded DATAFACE project aims to research the possible threats that the deployment of facial-recognition tools in public areas poses to the rights to privacy and data protection at European level. Legitimate and proportionate usage will be used as criteria to provide policy recommendations on adequate legal frameworks.

Objective

In the age of artificial intelligence, identifying anyone in public space through facial recognition is becoming faster and easier. However, the technologies are not without flaws. Recent studies have shown that the technologies are prone to gender and skin-colour biases, and not highly accurate. Despite their imperfections, governments around the world deploy the technologies at a breakneck pace. Strong criticisms have been heard over the lack of appropriate legal frameworks to regulate technologies that can negatively impact civil liberties and personal freedoms. Since a few years, concerns have further grown concerning their use in China where they are deployed to support a social credit system to rate citizens’ behaviour. Facial recognition technologies can potentially be very pervasive surveillance tools. The proposed research will identify the threats and risks that the use of facial recognition for surveillance purposes poses to the rights to privacy and data protection as defined at EU level. The objective is to define the legitimate and proportionate uses of the technologies based on country trends (France, UK, USA, and China), their technical characteristics, and the legal frameworks applicable to the rights to privacy and data protection.

Coordinator

KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
Net EU contribution
€ 267 480,00
Address
OUDE MARKT 13
3000 Leuven
Belgium

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Region
Vlaams Gewest Prov. Vlaams-Brabant Arr. Leuven
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
€ 267 480,00