"Ban biometric mass surveillance!", 13 May 2020

Across Europe, highly intrusive and rights-violating facial recognition and biometric processing technologies are quietly becoming ubiquitous in our public spaces. As the European Commission consults the public on what to do, EDRi calls on the Commission and EU Member States to ensure that such technologies are comprehensively banned in both law and practice...

[M]any governments have done this in collaboration with secretive tech companies, in the absence of public debate, and without having demonstrated that the systems meet even the most basic thresholds of accountability, necessity, proportionality, legitimacy, legality or safeguarding.

Since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, apps and other proposals have been suggested to rapidly expand bodily and health surveillance systems under the guise of public health. However, there is a real risk that the damage caused by widening surveillance measures will last long after the pandemic is over...