The European data protection commissioners, united in the Article 29 Working Party, invite the public to respond to a position paper about videosurveillance. The paper gives an interesting overview of the differences in legislation and measures adopted in the different member states since the transposition of the Privacy Directive (95/46/EC).

The Commissioners are specifically worried about 7 cases, resulting from experience or tests currently in progress:

• permanent interconnection of video surveillance systems;
• association of image and biometric data such as fingerprints (banks);
• use of voice identification systems;
• implementation of indexing systems that can automatically retrieve images ;
• use of facial recognition systems that can automatically identify certain individuals on the basis of templates and/or standard identity-kits (like skin-colour);
• possibility to automatically trace routes and trails and/or reconstruct or foresee a person’s behaviour;
• taking of automated decisions based on individual profiles.

Call for participation (closing date 31.05.2003)
http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/dataprot/wpdocs/consultat...