Facial recognition: what the majority intends to do and what the EU rules are

Ah, Italy. The country that gave us the Roman Empire, Renaissance art, and now a new AI legislative decree that promises to comply with EU rules while the opposition runs around 'up in arms' about facial recognition. It is a genuinely beautiful display of political choreography: the majority winks at the cameras, the government issues a statement about continuing to follow EU rules, and everyone pretends that the small matter of mass biometric surveillance is merely a scheduling issue on the Brussels calendar. The decree itself, one suspects, is written in the language of a contract you sign without reading.

The headline, which asks what the majority intends to do and what the EU rules are, is the sort of question a parent asks when they already know the answer. The majority intends to do the bare minimum required to keep the opposition off-balance, and the EU rules are the floor, not a ceiling. Europe's institutions have spent years producing legislation that bans the most egregious uses of facial recognition while leaving exactly enough headroom for a determined interior ministry to install cameras and call it 'public safety.' Italy's government can therefore say, with a perfectly straight face, that it will continue to comply with EU rules, because compliance has never stopped anyone from finding a loophole the size of a small country.

Meanwhile, the opposition is 'up in arms,' which in modern political parlance means issuing press releases and demanding amendments that will be soundly ignored. The truly impressive thing is that no one in this drama is pretending the technology itself is the problem. The opposition objects, the government reassures, and the AI legislative decree will presumably pass with enough vague wording to keep every lawyer in Italy employed for a decade. The rest of us get to enjoy the benefits of facial recognition — a technology that never forgets a face, much less a vote — secure in the knowledge that the EU rules are being 'complied with' all the way to the database. Magnifico.