The Legal Regulation of the Facial Recognition and Real-Time Remote Biometric Identification Systems in Ukraine and the Czech Republic

The presented article, created as the output of the project no. 23-PKVV-UM-6 called CODE (COoperation and DEvelopment) supported within the grant program of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, deals with the legal regulation of the facial recognition and real-time remote biometric identification systems usage in Ukraine and the Czech Republic. As for the situation in Ukraine, it should be noted that the adoption of the draft Law of Ukraine ‘On the Unified System of Video Monitoring of the State of Public Security’ poses risks of violating human rights and freedoms, and will significantly limit the fundamental right of every person to privacy. In order to ensure proper legal regulation of video monitoring of public security using facial recognition systems in Ukraine, the draft Law of Ukraine ‘On the Unified System of Video Monitoring of the State of Public Security’ needs to be finalized and brought into line with the above provisions of the relevant EU and Council of Europe legislation. As for the situation in the Czech Republic, the conclusion is that the AI Act does allow the use of real-time remote biometric identification systems, but under certain conditions. The main one is that the use of such a system to search for a specific person or persons must be authorized by a court or other independent authority. In real terms, this means that the decision to include a particular person in the reference database shall be made by a court. However, in relation to this very basic safeguard against abuse of the system, the Act no. 110/2019 Coll., on the Processing of Personal Data is to propose that this rule shall not be applied to certain relatively vaguely defined groups of persons. Thus, the Act shall negate this fundamental control mechanism in certain cases, in fact.