6 April 2023
ICCL welcomes the acknowledgement by Government TDs that the use of facial recognition technology (FRT) by An Garda Síochána poses a serious risk to people’s fundamental rights and calls for proper scrutiny of Government proposals.
ICCL welcomes the recognition by TDs that bypassing pre-legislative scrutiny of such a controversial move is inappropriate, unacceptable and is an affront to our democratic law-making process.
ICCL is opposed to the plans to introduce FRT into the Irish criminal justice system as FRT enables mass surveillance and discriminatory targeted surveillance.
Olga Cronin, Surveillance and Human Rights Policy Officer, ICCL, said:
“What is starkly absent from the Department of Justice’s public commentary on this matter is its actual plan for FRT use, or a substantive case for the proportionality, necessity, accuracy or fairness of any or each use. Many questions remain unanswered. Given the impact that FRT has on people’s fundamental rights, this is not good enough.”
FRT enables the identification and tracking of individuals without warranted suspicion and can scan large amounts of publicly captured visual data to draw powerful inferences about people, the vast majority of whom would be of no interest whatsoever to the Gardaí.
Such surveillance can draw a detailed map of a person’s identity and activities, including their age, gender, interests, movements, employment, religious practices, health issues, and social relationships.
There is also significant and robust scientific evidence demonstrating accuracy and bias concerns, which have led to people being mistaken for someone else and being wrongly arrested. FRT systems are largely trained using white, male faces, meaning women and people of colour are disproportionately impacted and more likely to be victims of mistaken identity.
ICCL understands that the Department of Justice has also not yet consulted with the Data Protection Commission about its plans, as per its legal obligations under the Data Protection Act, nor has it consulted with members of marginalised communities who would be disproportionately affected by the use of FRT.
The fact that the Department wants to introduce FRT via an amendment to the Garda Síochána Recording Devices Bill, which will vastly expand An Garda Síochána’s access to recorded imagery, serves to only deepen our concerns.
Ends
Available for comment: Olga Cronin, Surveillance and Human Rights Policy Officer, ICCL
For media queries: ruth.mccourt@iccl.ie / 087 415 7162