(From the foreword)

...
This latest research, conducted on behalf of EDRi by independent researchers at the EIJI, demonstrates that the scale of the problem of abusive and unlawful biometric mass surveillance practices in the EU goes even deeper than we knew.

In line with wider trends that we have been following across the EU and beyond, these reports on Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland are emblematic of an ideology of mass biometric data collection and processing that is accelerating towards becoming systematic for how people are able to exist in Europe.

Without being willing to have their highly sensitive biometric data captured and processed constantly – and contrary to important principles such as data minimisation as well as legal rules that are supposed to prohibit the unnecessary processing of biometric data - people across these countries will find it increasingly difficult to access civic services, to travel, and even to go to the shops, without being tracked, profiled, and monitored via their biometric characteristics.

In both the Netherlands and Germany, such systems are being used repeatedly for petty and disproportionate reasons, especially given the high level of intrusion that they entail. The numbers of matches are low and the impact even when matches occur is negligible on public interests. That is to say that even when they work as intended, these systems are not capable of achieving their stated purpose(s). As the researchers put it, current practices show that the tools are:

“[D]eployed less in response to specific and evidentiary threats but rather indiscriminately as a precautionary or deterrent measure.”
...

https://edri.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/EDRI_RISE_REPORT.pdf

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Prof. Enrico Nardelli
Dipartimento di Matematica - Universita' di Roma "Tor Vergata"
Via della Ricerca Scientifica snc - 00133 Roma
tel: +39 06 7259.4204    fax: +39 06 7259.4699
mobile: +39 335 590.2331     e-mail: nardelli@mat.uniroma2.it
home page: http://www.mat.uniroma2.it/~nardelli
blog: http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/blog/enardelli/
      http://link-and-think.blogspot.it/
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