European Parliament could legitimise abusive technologies under new EU AI law, Amnesty International warned

Amnesty International warned today of the vote on 14 June that the European Parliament should consolidate its ultimate position on the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) law to prohibit racist and discriminatory profiling systems that target migrants and other marginalised groups.

Mher Hakobyan, AI Regulation Adviser, expressed that European Parliament should not ignore the harm of racist AI systems. Lawmakers must ban racist profiling and risk-assessment systems that label migrants and asylum-seekers as ‘threats’ and predictive technologies that predict border movements and deny asylum rights.

In order to promote abuse against migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers at their borders, EU member states have turned more frequently to utilising secretive and hostile technologies. Amnesty International investigations have found that cameras manufactured by the Dutch company TKH Security are being used in public spaces and attached to police infrastructure in occupied East Jerusalem to consolidate the Israeli government’s grip on the Palestinian people and its apartheid system against Palestinians. In similar investigations, companies in France, Sweden and the Netherlands have sold digital surveillance systems such as facial recognition technology (FRT) and network cameras to significant players in Chinese mass surveillance.