Thread by @PICUM_post

🧵 AI should be regulated so that everyone is protected, whatever their skin colour/migration story. But the #AIAct the European Parliament is set to vote on is silent about something extremely dangerous: it's called "non-remote biometric identification".
euronews.com/2023/04/24/as-…

Non-remote biometric identification systems (NRBI) include hand-held devices that scan faces, fingerprints or palms, & voice or iris identification tech used by police to identify you.

These systems are harmful in several ways. For one thing, personal data collected through these devices could be leaked and sent to other places for other goals. This is how a military database of fingerprints and iris scans was found on sale on eBay 👇 nytimes.com/2022/12/27/tec…

NRBI is also v likely to lead to more racial profiling & surveillance. Racial profiling is already systemically used by law enforcement to stop people & check their migration status: race/ethnicity/skin colour are too often viewed as a proxy for a person’s migration status.

A 2014 study from the EU Fundamental Rights Agency showed that 79% of surveyed border guards at airports rated ethnicity as a “helpful indicator” to identify people attempting to enter the country in an irregular manner before speaking to them. fra.europa.eu/sites/default/…

2020 research in the UK found that for every White North European person in every 10,000 people stopped & scanned by police w handheld devices:
🚔 48 Arabic people
🚔 14 Black people
🚔 14 Asian people
are scanned on average. qmul.ac.uk/media/news/202…

In the Netherlands, border guards routinely used ethnic profiling to carry out border checks on people, until a court declared this practice illegal only a couple of months ago (Feb 2023).
apnews.com/article/nether…

As police and border guards are being equipped with handheld devices to scan faces and fingerprints, it's likely that checks based on ethnic profiling will be even more widespread - and will lead to harsher consequences for people who could be detained or deported as a result.

In France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, for instance, police have been given the power to fingerprint people they stop on the street to check if they have a permit. statewatch.org/publications/r…

Local human rights orgs have challenged a Greek program that equips police with smart devices that allow them to scan vehicle license plates, collect fingerprints, and scan faces with the aim of identifying undocumented people. hrw.org/news/2022/01/1…

In this context, NRBI will likely make racial and ethnic profiling stops and ID checks ever more pervasive, for non-citizens and citizens alike. For anyone who "looks foreign".

Unchecked use of NRBI is also not in line with the EU's own standards on data protection. The GDPR already considers biometric data as sensitive and worthy of extra protection: as it is now, the AI Act doesn't foresee any checks and balances for NRBI.

The European Parliament is still in time to amend the AI Act so that it prevents NRBI from being used in harmful ways. We call on MEPs to recognise NRBI as a "high-risk" risk of AI and subject it to stronger safeguards.

More in our joint op-ed w @edri 👇
euronews.com/2023/04/24/as-…