‘European Commission wants to regulate facial recognition’

The European Commission reportedly wants to subject the use of facial recognition to strict rules. Among other things, on the basis of the rules, European citizens must know when data has been used to recognize their face.

The rules should further restrict the ‘arbitrary’ use of facial recognition technology by companies and governments and protect the privacy of citizens in the EU. The use of biometric data for facial recognition already falls under the General Data Protection Regulation, which means that citizens must, for example, give explicit permission for its use.

Under the new rules, citizens should also be given ways to know when the facial recognition data has been used. This is reported by sources familiar with the plans to the Financial Times.

The plans are at an early stage and part of a larger effort by the European Commission to establish ethical rules for artificial intelligence. The call to regulate facial recognition has been around for some time now that the technology is being used for more and more applications, with the associated risks of abuse and privacy violations. From the business community, Microsoft has been arguing for some time for rules regarding use.