Regulating the Use of Facial Recognition Technology in Europe: State of the Art and the Way Forward

On the occasion of the Data Science & Law Forum organised by Microsoft, Prof. Theodore Christakis, Chair on the AI-Regualtion at MIAI Grenoble Alpes, will co-organise a by invitation only workshop entitled: “Regulating the Use of Facial Recognition Technology in Europe: State of the Art and the Way Forward”.

Taking place only a week after the date European Commission will unveil the proposal for a regulatory framework on high-risk applications of AI, this workshop aims to create an open and productive exchange of views around facial recognition technology (FRT), a topic that has been greatly debated over the last year.

The workshop will gather policymakers, citizen advocates, industry representatives, law enforcement officials, legal scholars and technologists for in-depth engagement about different policy angles of the development and deployment of facial recognition technology. The topics that will be discussed include the following:

• What could be our first assessment of the Commission’s proposals on FRT regulation?
• Is it possible to elaborate a risk assessment framework in relation with the use of FRT? Does the assessment of risk change significantly depending on the different use cases of FRT (authentication, identification and tracking)?
• What do the positions of Data Protection Authorities and the decisions of Courts in Europe on the use of FRT tells us about the current state of art in regulation?
• How could the covid-19 crisis affect the debate about regulation of FRT in Europe?
• What exactly is included and what might be excluded from the call by civil society to “ban biometric mass surveillance”?
• What about the argument that “facial recognition can make us safer” and could be deployed with safeguards and “red lines”?