Our schedule for Saturday, 7 November

16:45 CET – Gathering

17:00 CET – Welcome!

17:10 CET – Input and Fireside Chat: Biometric Surveillance

In this fireside chat, we invite civil society (TBC), Xabier Lareo from the European Data Protection Supervisor’s office (EDPS) and MEP Patrick Breyer for a thought-provoking conversation on biometric surveillance. Moderator Ella Jakubowska from European Digital Rights (EDRi) will guide the session in order to get to the heart of one of the big problems of facial recognition and other forms of biometric surveillance in our public spaces: power.

We’ll consider:
• Misconceptions about biometrics – and why the EDPS recently took action to dispel the myths that we hear from companies developing biometric tech;
• How biometric surveillance can infringe on democracy by trying to dictate what is and is not considered criminal;
• If and how private companies may be increasing or consolidating their power over people and governments through the use of biometrics;
• How we can resist the threats of indiscriminate or arbitrarily-targeted biometric surveillance in order to restore public power and control over our public spaces.

18:00 CET – Workshops!

WS 1: Narratives on banning biometric surveillance
by Lotte Houwing, Bér Engels (Bits of Freedom)

WS 2: Clearview AI and the GDPR
by Alan Dahi (noyb) and Matthias Marx (CCC)

WS 3: EU Actions on Biometric Mass Surveillance
by EDRi, Homo Digitalis (GR), SHARE (SR) and Hermes Center (IT)

WS 4: OpaCity: Biometric Mass Surveillance in the Balkans
by Elena Stojanovska (Metamorphosis Foundation) and Andrej Petrovski (SHARE Foundation)

WS 5: Fingerprinting for ID cards – what can be done?
by Friedemann Ebelt (Digitalcourage)

WS 6: Facial recognition in daily life
by Jonas Vollmer (Selbstbestimmt Digital)

Narratives on banning biometric surveillance:
Come up with good frames and set the narrative on biometric surveillance in public space. We want to do this by organising a brainstorm session. We want to try to tickle all of your brains untill the frames come out. We especially invite people that are working on facial recognition/biometric surveillance.
The desired outcome is many and good frames to use in all our campaigns to ban facial recognition and other forms of biometric surveillance in public space.

Clearview AI and the GDPR:
The Hamburg Data Protection Authority is pursuing an investigation into Clearview AI. The session is about the initial complaint that led to the investigation and the legal analysis of Clearview AI’s business practices.
We want to raise awareness about the practices and legality of Clearview AI and similar services.

EU Actions on Biometric Mass Surveillance:
After a quick introduction about the new Reclaim Your Face campaign, we will hear success stories from Greece, Italy, and Serbia. People across Europe are calling to ban biometric mass surveillance, are national governments and the EU hearing us?
We want to enable and empower people to participate in a critical debate about mass biometric surveillance in their countries. At the end of this sessions, you will understand how to best focus your energy if you’re passionate about stopping biometric mass surveillance.

OpaCity: Biometric Mass Surveillance in the Balkans
Two cities, Belgrade and Skopje are in different phases of the Chinese project titled SafeCity. While it is still unknown of what is going to happen in North Macedonia, Belgrade is becoming the first capital in Europe to have its territory covered with a Biometric surveillance system. In both cases, citizens know next to nothing about the implications of this technology.

Fingerprinting for ID cards – what can be done?
As of 2 August 2021 fingerprinting in ID Cards will become compulsory. The EU adopted regulation 2019/1157 to strengthen the security of ID cards and residence documents in 2019. Questions to discuss: 1. What is the situation in Germany and other EU states? 2. How can we tackle the regulation? 3. What can activists do about mandatory fingerprinting? 4. What can the public do?

Facial recognition in daily life:
An audio project with experts and citizens in Germany about comfort, public space and (counter-)strategies from arts, politics and law.

18:50 CET – Short break

19:00 CET – Closing Session

• Reports from the workshops
• Wojciech Wiewiórowski about current developments at EU level
• Going into the future activated