Home / Tech News / Featured Tech News / EU reportedly no longer pursuing five-year ban on facial recognition tech

EU reportedly no longer pursuing five-year ban on facial recognition tech

Just a few weeks ago, we began hearing that the European Union was considering a several year ban on public use of facial recognition technology in order to buy some time to figure out the legal side of things. Since then, some changes have been made, with new reports indicating that the EU will instead leave decisions on facial recognition tech to individual member states, rather than making blanket rules. 

Previous concerns from the EU included the accuracy of the technology and the ability to breach privacy laws by implementing it. Now according to a report from The Financial Times, the European Commission will move away from a temporary ban and instead encourage member states to put their own rules in place.

The FT (via engadget) has a source that says the initial draft caused a rift between civil rights activists and security experts. It is clear why this may be the case, as while facial recognition technology may enable better tracking for law enforcement, it also potentially breaches the privacy rights of everyday citizens.

For now, the proposed 3-5 year ban on facial recognition tech is being shelved, but no final rulings have been made just yet so we should hear more updates in the weeks ahead.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Facial recognition technology is a sensitive subject and particularly divisive. How do you all feel about the idea of this technology being rolled out publicly? 

Become a Patron!

Check Also

Micron announces world’s first PCIe Gen 6 SSD

Micron has recently unveiled its new portfolio of data centre SSDs based on its 9th …

We've noticed that you are using an ad blocker.

Thank you for visiting KitGuru. Our news and reviews teams work hard to bring you the latest stories and finest, in-depth analysis.

We want to be as informative as possible – and to help our readers make the best buying decisions. The mechanism we use to run our business and pay some of the best journalists in the world, is advertising.

If you want to support KitGuru, then please add www.kitguru.net to your ad blocking whitelist or disable your adblocking software. It really makes a difference and allows us to continue creating the kind of content you really want to read.

It is important you know that we don’t run pop ups, pop unders, audio ads, code tracking ads or anything else that would interfere with the KitGuru experience. Adblockers can actually block some of our free content, such as galleries!