they always had been or at least tried, for decades by now, the only thing which had been holding them back was the EU frequently being like "no wtf UK, that is against human rights, EU law, etc."
> Has society really become this dangerous that we must deploy these things?
no, and it also has a long track record of not only marginally improving your crime statistics. And especially stuff like facial recognition vans are most times not used to protect citizens but to create lists for who attended demos and similar. Which is most useful for suppressing/harassing your citizens instead of protecting them.
And yet they are still pushing [0]
[0] https://edri.org/our-work/despite-warning-from-lawyers-eu-go...
And also the excuse included: “not China”, but even this doesn’t come as cause for concern anymore.
Have a look at the latest US “country report on human rights practices 2025”. Germany is flagged as unsafe so to say.
It is as you can only hope that the NSA has some way to spy on your data when EU gets more on more anti privacy and data protection means EU only storage is mandatory.
Dire times. Double standards are in full effect.
Please. Stop falling for the right-wing propaganda.
Germany can be unsafe and US too to the extent they need national guard to get back control
Sure GDPR and what not, but they're full of loopholes for allowing government to do what private parties are not.
It would be nice if we removed the security guards for politicans, and if they're not doing bad stuff, they have nothing to fear.
HN has terrible EU Derangement Syndrome:
any time its mentioned here, suddenly there are tens of people lining up to blindly shit on it, usually for laws it hasn't actually passed, or literal anti-truths like your comment, despite the fact that it is consistently passing the best tech-focused laws of any major governmental body anywhere, and the proposed laws that everyone repeatedly loses their minds over have never once actually come to pass. even when they released the DMA and DSA, possibly the two most HN-friendly pieces of legislation of all time, half the comments were attempts at criticism, basically seemingly because people here just love to hate the EU, sans facts
This is simply wrong:
They have banned _live_ facial recognition - and with exemptions such as e.g. for terrorism and other severe crimes, which is becoming quite broad.
They are allowing facial recognition when done after-the-fact for law enforcement. Probably also for petty crimes.
The EU courts have sometimes been helpful, but the EU lawmakers have been atleast as bad as the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
As other comments have pointed out the EU has also pushed a lot of other privacy invasive legislation.
if you're going to change the central focus of your comment, do it in a reply not an edit
We have another token legislation from EU forbidding private parties to most anything, and carefully inserting loopholes for authorities and government to do as they please.
True, the restrictions on live facial recognition is a bit more severe for law enforcement than usual.
But: A. It's not something most people here care about a lot. Law enforcement are still allowed to use AI to create a file on every citizen. B. It gives them political points, because now people less-in-the-know will think that they are actually protecting privacy, which is again, not true.
Here is an article about live/post facial recognition:
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ai-facial-recognition-tec...
well thank fuck for that! besides financial self-interest, why would you want private parties doing anything with AI and biometrics whatsoever? if anyone is to at all, it should be publicly accountable bodies that aren't operating based on a profit motive, but really it should be none at all!
>It gives them political points, because now people less-in-the-know will think that they are actually protecting privacy, which is again, not true.
this entire sentence stinks of "I just don't like the EU and I'm just going to criticise it no matter what". people in the know? people who have read the law specifically stating that facial recognition can only be used in severe, clearly-defined cases, with judicial approval, in highly time-limited windows? people who've read that if it is to be used post-hoc, it has to have judicial authorisation linked to a criminal offence. and you're saying that this in no way protects privacy?
the UK is rolling out AI police vans all over the country to try and recognise people they have on lists. no judicial approval is required, there's no time-limit, and as far as I'm aware there's no restriction on what crimes it's used for either. private companies are allowed to use it, obviously equally with no judicial approval
essentially mate, I think you need to have a good look at whether your opinions here are coming from "I genuinely think the EU's legislation is an issue here" or "I don't like the idea of the EU in general and I'm going to criticise anything it does"
I can't really begin to fathom how this is good.
"Private parties" are mighty multinational enterprises with essentially limitless pockets, entities whose factual power and political influence rivals most governments. Countries all over the world have been struggling to restrain them for the past decade in order to keep their sovereignty.
What exact "interests and ideas" do you have that would involve the necessity for public facial recognition? Because I, for one, don't want my biometric data in your system without my explicit consent.
Or at least just say that straight instead of surrounding it with empty verbiage. The overwhelming proportion of people all over the world don't care about the EU until it does a horrible (or a good) thing, and then they care about the thing it did and why it might have done it. It's not their ex-boyfriend.
People are trying to figure out why it's run by crazy people now, and they blame this on the fact that it is largely an undemocratic organization run by extreme multi-generational elites with a quickly lowering opinion on human rights, freedom of speech and the importance of peace. This is not personal. The EU is not a person.
"Private parties" refer to non-governmental entities, such as individuals or businesses. You may be acting on a governments behalf, but I am not.
> I, for one, don't want my biometric data in your system without my explicit consent.
If it's a single individual watching (for example) the sidewalk in front of his house and not disseminating the data in any way then what does it matter? Where is the potential downside? There are plenty of neighborhoods with at least a few retirees sitting staring out the front window for multiple hours each day.
As far as I can tell in the vast majority of cases surveillance only becomes problematic when both ubiquitous and centralized.