FB pixel

Partial success in transparency lawsuit into EU’s AI lie detector research

Partial success in transparency lawsuit into EU’s AI lie detector research
 

Member of the European Parliament and civil liberties campaigner Patrick Breyer has achieved a partial success in his legal dispute against the European Research Executive Agency to have classified documents and on the ethical justifiability, legal admissibility and results of biometrics-based video lie detector technology trialed in the EU-funded iBorderCtrl project.

The Court of Justice of the European Union published it ruling which states that the EU research may no longer keep the documents entirely secret, with some further conditions.

Ethical and legal evaluations of technologies for “automated deception detection” or automated “risk assessment” must be published, but this does not apply if they relate to the iBorderCtrl: Intelligent Portable Border Control System project. The results of that project may also be kept secret, in order to protect commercial interests.

However, project participants are obliged to publish a scientific report on such projects within four years, to provide public transparency.

MEP Patrick Breyer sees the ruling to the lawsuit he filed in March 2019 as a partial success as it should boost public discussion around the dangers of the technologies used in mass surveillance, mass control and personal profiling.

“Trade secrets’ will no longer be a killer argument for refusing public access,” writes Dr. Breyer after the ruling. “What is not acceptable, however, is that the specific EU surveillance projects should remain secret for years and that an overriding public interest in their transparency has not been recognised.

“Taxpayers, science, media and parliaments must have access to publicly funded research – especially in the case of pseudo-scientific and Orwellian developments such as a ‘video lie detector’. There is an urgent need for legal reform when it comes to intrusive EU research and development!”

The €4.5 million (US$5.1 million) EU-funded iBorderCtrl research project aimed to develop a prototype of an online lie detector test which people wanting to travel to the EU could take at home via a webcam. The system would analyze facial expression to determine whether the truth was being told.

The technology was developed by scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University, selling it commercially through their firm Silent Talker Ltd. The scientists claim that as the technology was built on machine learning, they did not know what the system assumes are the signs of deception, states Breyer.

Meanwhile, scientists in Israel have published peer-reviewed results of their new approach to lie detection which has proven 73 percent accurate in simple situations.

Article Topics

 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   | 

Latest Biometrics News

 

Understanding of what #SafeDPI is, how to achieve it creeps forward

If a government spends millions of dollars on an identity system or any other kind of digital public infrastructure that…

 

Financial firms beef up fraud prevention with biometrics and FIDO standards

Globally, financial companies are moving to strengthen their digital security and identity protocols, leveraging biometrics, FIDO standards and cryptography to…

 

Building trust in the age of digital identity: why cyber resilience must come first

By Nathalie Gosset, VP Identity and Biometric Solutions at Thales Trust is the invisible infrastructure of the digital world. Without…

 

Biometric ticketing, IDV sweeps across Brazilian stadiums under mandate

Brazil has mandated face biometrics for use in large stadiums, a landmark move for the widespread implementation of the technology….

 

China’s supreme court releases facial recognition violation cases in crackdown

China’s highest court has upheld the need for stronger protection of personal information, emphasizing to judges the need to maintain…

 

Privacy doesn’t have to cost us great online services

By Andrew Black, Managing Director ConnectID and Sujeet Rana, Chief Digital Officer NAB For years, we accepted an implicit trade-off…

Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Biometric Market Analysis

Most Viewed This Week

Featured Company

Biometrics Insight, Opinion

Digital ID In-Depth

Biometrics White Papers

Biometrics Events