Louisa Specht-Riemenschneider, the Federal Data Protection Commissioner, has publicly criticized the use of facial recognition technologies. Speaking in Berlin, she warned that these methods are not only “prone to errors” but are also “critically questionable from a data protection standpoint”.
Specht-Riemenschneider emphasized the critical need to develop less invasive and more data-preserving alternatives. She noted that the development of such alternatives-and therefore the possible abandonment of facial scanning procedures-represents an opportunity.
The Commissioner expressed her hope that robust, data-efficient methods can be created for age and identity verification. According to her, protecting user privacy requires strictly limiting the collection and processing of biometric data to only what is necessary.
