Toward Regulation: Addressing the Legal Void in Facial Recognition Technology

By Privacy International.

Summary: Examines regulatory gaps around facial recognition technology and proposes policy responses to close them.

Relevance: Falls under Surveillance & Civic Life: documents the legal vacuum letting facial recognition expand across policing and private-sector settings that social workers’ clients move through daily (transit, retail, shelters), with clear disparate-impact consequences for people of color.

Key findings: London’s Metropolitan Police scanned roughly 4.7 million faces in 2023 and about 1 million in 2025 under ordinary common-law policing powers rather than dedicated legislation, and the piece cites a wrongful accusation in Argentina where FRT misidentified a man 600 km from the actual crime. The EU AI Act is presented as the first comprehensive counter-model, banning live public FRT except for narrow crime categories and requiring judicial authorization and rights impact assessments.

Read the original: https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/5682/toward-regulation-addressing-legal-void-facial-recognition-technology