‘Look at the camera and say cheese’: the existing European legal framework for facial recognition technology in criminal investigations

Facial recognition technology represents the state of the art in modern criminal investigations. However, the legal position regarding its use in Europe remains unclear. This ambiguity is not because of a total lack of applicable norms. Rather, it occurs because the existing standards create a kind of legal patchwork distributed among European Union primary and secondary laws and norms from the Council of Europe. Although the recent European Commission proposal on a legal framework for artificial intelligence has clarified some issues, it has also added more complexity to an already unclear domain. Before launching an effort to build a specific set of norms for the use of FRT in criminal investigations, it is crucial to survey the norms already in place to avoid contradictions and overlaps.