News




Letter to EU Commissioner for Justice

On 1 April, a coalition of 51 human rights, digital rights and social justice organisations sent a letter to European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, calling on the Commissioner to prohibit uses of biometrics that enable mass surveillance or other dangerous and harmful uses of AI. The letter comes ahead of the long-awaited proposal for new EU laws on artificial intelligence.

On 1 April 2021, a coalition of 51 human rights, digital rights and social justice organisations sent a letter to European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, ahead of the long-awaited proposal for new EU laws on artificial intelligence (AI). The coalition is calling on the Commissioner to prohibit dangerous and harmful uses of AI that contravene fundamental rights. Specifically, they call to ban uses of biometrics that enable mass surveillance or other dangerous and harmful uses of AI, on fundamental rights groups.

This open letter builds on the January letter by 62 civil society organisations calling for red lines in the AI proposal and the letter from 116 MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) calling on the European Commission to put people ahead of profit.

The European Commission has set itself the important task of carving out a European way forward with AI that puts trust, excellence, and the protection of fundamental rights at its core. To achieve that goal, the upcoming legislative proposal on AI must take the necessary step of prohibiting applications of AI that irremediably violate fundamental rights, such as remote biometric identification technologies that enable inherently undemocratic mass surveillance.

The group also calls for the explicit inclusion of marginalised and affected communities in the development of EU AI legislation and policy.

Read the open letter here.

Add your support to the call by signing the officially-recognised EU petition to ban biometric mass surveillance practices now.



ReclaimYourFace is a movement led by civil society organisations across Europe:

Access Now ARTICLE19 Bits of Freedom CCC Defesa dos Direitos Digitais (D3) Digitalcourage Digitale Gesellschaft CH Digitale Gesellschaft DE Državljan D EDRi Electronic Frontier Finland epicenter.works Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights Homo Digitalis IT-Political Association of Denmark IuRe La Quadrature du Net Liberties Metamorphosis Foundation Panoptykon Foundation Privacy International SHARE Foundation
In collaboration with our campaign partners:

AlgorithmWatch AlgorithmWatch/CH All Out Amnesty International Anna Elbe Aquilenet Associazione Luca Coscioni Ban Facial Recognition Europe Big Brother Watch Certi Diritti Chaos Computer Club Lëtzebuerg (C3L) CILD D64 Danes je nov dan Datapanik Digitale Freiheit DPO Innovation Electronic Frontier Norway European Center for Not-for-profit Law (ECNL) European Digital Society Eumans Football Supporters Europe Fundación Secretariado Gitano (FSG) Forum InformatikerInnen für Frieden und gesellschaftliche Verantwortung Germanwatch German acm chapter Gesellschaft Fur Informatik (German Informatics Society) GONG Hellenic Association of Data Protection and Privacy Hellenic League for Human Rights info.nodes irish council for civil liberties JEF, Young European Federalists Kameras Stoppen Ligue des droits de L'Homme (FR) Ligue des Droits Humains (BE) LOAD e.V. Ministry of Privacy Privacy Lx Privacy Network Projetto Winston Smith Reporters United Saplinq Science for Democracy Selbstbestimmt.Digital STRALI Stop Wapenhandel The Good Lobby Italia UNI-Europa Unsurv Vrijbit Wikimedia FR Xnet


Reclaim Your Face is also supported by:

Jusos Piratenpartei DE Pirátská Strana

MEP Patrick Breyer, Germany, Greens/EFA
MEP Marcel Kolaja, Czechia, Greens/EFA
MEP Anne-Sophie Pelletier, France, The Left
MEP Kateřina Konečná, Czechia, The Left



Should your organisation be here, too?
Here's how you can get involved.
If you're an individual rather than an organisation, or your organisation type isn't covered in the partnering document, please get in touch with us directly.