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.
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.