Throughout the European Union, governments are experimenting with highly intrusive systems of facial recognition and other biometric mass surveillance in public spaces. At the same time, there has been a global uproar against the usage of these technologies due to their alarming consequences for fundamental rights, fuelling mass surveillance and racial discrimination. In the united states, lawmakers have already started to impose strong legislations that ban the use of these technologies.

The Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament therefore calls on the European Commission to equally acknowledge the adverse effect of biometric surveillance methods on our fundamental rights, and to impose a ban of biometric mass surveillance technologies in the European Union.
Together with international experts, we want to discuss with you about the harmful effects of biometric mass surveillance and the ways through which these technologies amplify racial discrimination and exclusion in our societies.

Programme
16:00 – 16:05: Introduction by MEP Patrick Breyer (Pirate Party, Greens/EFA)
16:05 – 16:50: Panel Discussion with Experts on Surveillance, Human Rights, Race and Tech
16:50 – 17:00: Q&A with audience
17:00 – 17:05: Concluding Remarks by MEP Kim van Sparrentak (GroenLinks , Greens/EFA)  

Mutale Nkonde is an AI Policy advisor of the UN, member of the Tik Tok Advisory Board and CEO of AI for the People, a nonprofit communications firm that seeks to change tech neutrality narratives. Prior to this, Nkonde worked in AI Governance. Nkonde holds fellowships at the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford University and the Institute of Advanced Study at Notre Dame and is an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

Gracie Mae Bradley is a human rights expert and campaigner. She is Interim Director at Liberty, and her interests include state surveillance, migration, policing and equality.

Ella Jakubowska is a Policy and Campaigns Officer at European Digital Rights (EDRi), the largest European network defending fundamental rights and freedoms online. She leads the network's advocacy on biometric technologies (such as facial recognition) and is one of the coordinators of the recently-launched pan-European "Reclaim Your Face" campaign to ban biometric mass surveillance. Ella is also involved in work on artificial intelligence, human rights due diligence, and non-discrimination.

Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, answers my questions in the JURI committee of the EU Parliament on livestream takedowns, the planned E-ID and blocking of IP addresses.

In this webinar, Patrick Breyer discusses the importance of free speech in an era of disinformation with Judit Beyer, Professor of Media Law and International Law at the Budapest Business School.

The recent ban of Donald Trump from basically every social media platform has reignited the debate about who decides who else gets to have free speech. German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that the "fundamental right" of freedom of expression should be regulated by the law, “not by the managers of social media platforms". France's finance minister Bruno Le Maire labelled the control that Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks have over the online space as a "digital oligarchy".

Who is really in control in our democracies: private companies or democratically elected public officials? What does the Trump’s social media ban tell us about the power of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other platforms? How can the EU address conspiratorial, fake and violent content online, without disproportionate restrictions on the freedom of expression? What role is the new Digital Services Act (DSA) expected to play in this dynamic? Does the Commission’s proposal for the DSA contain the elements that will make the dominant online players assume responsibility over the content shared on their platforms? How could the current setting be improved when it comes to transparency, monitoring and enforcement of EU-rules? Should Facebook, Twitter and other social media be treated as publishers rather than tech firms and, in this way, be more accountable for the content available on their platforms?

We will try to answer these questions with:
- Patrick Breyer, Member of the European Parliament for the Pirate Party (Greens/EFA group). He works on issues linked to privacy, the free Internet and, more in detail, the Digital Service Act, i.e. the biggest EU revision of internet rules in 20 years;

• Judit Bayer, Professor of Media Law and International Law at the Budapest Business School, University of Applied Sciences. She has authored several books and articles about freedom of expression on the internet, the liability of internet service providers, public service broadcasting and human rights.

MEP Patrick Breyer's plenary speech in the European Parliament on 25 March 2021:

In Europe, our personal data is legally protected against misuse, data theft and data loss to a greater extent than anywhere else in the world.

This gold standard of data protection and privacy safeguards our freedom and self-determination – contrary for example to what the Chinese dictatorship is doing.

Personal data is not an industrial commodity. But our privacy rights are only worth as much as we are willing to fight for them and defend them against industrial interests and powerful states like the USA.

The data protection authorities need to issue compliance orders and impose penalties promptly, without regard to business interests.

The EU Commission needs to initiate infringement proceedings where this is not happening.

And we as the people's representatives need to fight chat control, data retention and total tracking in ePrivacy and the Digital Services Act, and for the right to anonymity.

After all, our children also have a right to live freely without permanent observation and manipulation.