Home Marina KALJURAND

. ‒ Artificial intelligence helps us in many aspects of our lives and its future applications will surely continue to do so. But as much as we might try, we will never be able to replace justice with technology. Not only have the machine-learning solutions used in judicial systems and law enforcement proved inaccurate and led to wrongful arrests, but they also include applications that constitute de facto mass surveillance. It is therefore of utmost importance, that we maintain human oversight over artificial intelligence used in decisions made by the police and judicial authorities. We are at a point in time where we urgently need to secure fundamental rights in this field, which is why I voted in favour of this report. The threat of harm done to individuals is not theoretic, but already very real and concrete.
Processing facial images to identify a person is covered under European data protection law. The same goes for processing data of other human features, such as gait, fingerprints, DNA, and voice. The GDPR and the Law Enforcement Directive set limits on circumstances when biometric data can be processed. But more importantly, using facial recognition in a way that leads to mass surveillance in public spaces is a violation of data subject’s rights – the right to privacy and the right to data protection. In a democratic society, there should be no room for a blanket use of real-time facial recognition.
We also need greater transparency of all algorithms, especially those used by law enforcement and judicial authorities. The AI applications for prevention of criminal offences and sentencing are using data from the real world, and therefore can end up reproducing the existing racial and other biases. Effective human oversight comes only through meaningful transparency.
Legislators around the world are looking at regulating the use of artificial intelligence by law enforcement. Last month, Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, called for a moratorium on the use of artificial intelligence technology that poses a serious risk to human rights, including facial recognition systems that track people in public spaces. Europe has a chance to lead the way here, and we should use it to secure fundamental rights of our citizens and prevent any encoded discrimination in our judicial systems. If we get this right in our upcoming regulations, it will set the direction we want artificial intelligence to take, in Europe and globally.