Growing pressure
The EU’s executive has been under heavy pressure to respond to Hungary’s Pride ban, particularly on the use of facial recognition.
The EU moved in February to prohibit police forces from using real-time facial recognition technology under its artificial intelligence rulebook. Whether to ban systems that can identify people in real time based on their biometric data (i.e. through CCTV) was one of the thorniest topics as the law was being agreed — European Parliament lawmakers largely favored a ban while EU countries wanted an opt-out to allow them to fight serious crime.
As a result, “real-time biometric identification” by police forces is forbidden, but with significant exceptions.
“Hungary’s amended law appears to enable the use of real-time biometric surveillance at Pride events, which is an application clearly falling under the AI Act’s prohibitions,” said Italian social democratic European lawmaker Brando Benifei, one of the two architects of the EU’s AI Act.
“Such systems are not only technically designed to identify individuals in public without consent, but also risk inferring sensitive attributes like sexual orientation,” he said in a statement shared with POLITICO.
Two dozen civil society groups expressed their concerns about Hungary’s move in a letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week.
