Dear all, good morning!
The AIAact is in its final stages of discussion. One of the ‘defeats’ we could take, for now, is that at the beginning of the negotiations there was an interest in making facial recognition entirely forbidden… but this changed during the negotiations.
As things stand, they want to allow facial recognition, done by private individuals, in public spaces (as long as it is ex-post, which can mean as little as 30 seconds). in other words, a problem.
So as a final action we are launching an impromptu campaign, dontspy.eu, in which:
- we copied all the faces of the MEPs
- then ran a facial recognition tool that associates emotions, age, gender with MEPs.
- activities will follow to show the extreme problems of facial biometrics to the public.
Now I have no details yet to share (printing their faces to pollute the recognition, or finding similarities with sex offender registries… it is in between what we can do and what is realistic).
The campaign also has a second message about ‘sandboxes’, but in this introductory email I will not share too many details, I will send you a mock-up ASAP.
The important message is that we might need help from people in Brussels. We might also consider to print material, but we would need people in place spreading it, distributing, etc.
I wanted to start to sparkle possible interest, and collect expression of interest from whom, in Brussels, can help.
The parliament discussion would be around the 26th of April, so we need to get public (soft lunch) next week and raise the mess in two weeks.
Thanks!
Claudio and the others with me