The European Commission  is considering a temporary ban on the use of facial recognition technology, according to a draft proposal for regulating artificial intelligence obtained by Euroactiv.

Creating rules to ensure AI is ‘trustworthy and human’ has been an early flagship policy promise of the new Commission...

The leaked Commission white paper floats the idea of a three-to-five-year period... — to give EU lawmakers time to devise ways to assess and manage risks around the use of the technology, such as to people’s privacy rights or the risk of discriminatory impacts from biased algorithms.

“This would safeguard the rights of individuals, in particular against any possible abuse of the technology,” the Commission writes, adding that: “It would be necessary to foresee some exceptions, notably for activities in the context of research and development and for security purposes.” ...

I would argue the GDPR in practice forbids facial recognition by private companies in a surveillance context without member states actively legislating an exemption into the law using their powers to derogate. However, the merchants of doubt at facial recognition firms wish to sow heavy uncertainty into that area of law to legitimise their businesses,” [Dr Michael Veale, a lecturer in digital rights and regulation at UCL said].