The European Union is looking into whether Hungary’s plan to deploy facial recognition technology to identify people attending LGBTQ+ Pride events is illegal.
The European Union is looking into whether Hungary’s plan to deploy facial recognition technology to identify people attending LGBTQ+ Pride events is illegal.
Hey, thanks for pointing me directly to it. I wonder why there is so much noise about AI face detection when the core issue seems to be that pride is banned in the first place (and this is one way they want to enforce it).
Well, might be because eastern-european countries have much more discriminating laws on gays compared to north- and western European countries. So even though it’s getting worse, the rethoric isn’t anything new. Hungary has a law forbidding queer ‘propaganda’ that is said to be an almost exact copy of the russian law. Facial recognition on the other hand is very new, and as far as I know hasn’t been used on any other protest/celebration/public gathering anywhere in Europe so perhaps a part of the noise isn’t from people particularly concerned about LGBTQ+ rights, but about their civil liberties and see this as a first step of using digital tech as a mechanism of suppression. But I don’t really know tbh.
Fair enough! I was discussing this with a friend who lives in Hungary and she was aware of the newish specific ban on “pride”, but yeah as you said it is not a surprising or new rethoric for the country. Facial recognition is worrying though I fear regulating its use will be very difficult, and this is an important case for that which may impact all of the EU.
I haven’t seen the EU inspired by Hungary’s policies, so let’s hope that will be the same here as well.