The picture of supervision: facial recognition and rights in Hungary

Translated by Angela Tagliafierro

Last March the Hungarian Government forbad the Pride meetings and modified the law: they wanted to allow the Police to use biometric cameras to identify the demonstrators participating in them. This decision provoked strong protests by citizens as well as international organizations working to defend human rights. Once again, there is a concrete danger that technology may be used to guard and repress citizens and not to guarantee their basic rights.

At the beginning of the year, the Hungarian Parliament approved an amendment to the Constitution: it banned the Pride’s parades. This measure is part of President Orban’s politics, aiming to “the big Easter cleaning up as the bugs have survived the winter[1]”. The main freedoms of citizens are being limited because, as the Government claims, they want to protect the “correct physical, intellectual and moral development” of minors.

However, this measure strongly worried the civil society, since it legalised the usage of the facial recognition by the police to monitor these events.

What is biometric surveillance?

The facial recognition or biometric surveillance is a technology used to identify a person by their physical, biological and/or behavioural features. In particular, the facial recognition identifies a person through their face features by Artificial Intelligence. According to the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), this procedure violates some basic rights, such as privacy, data protection, freedom of speech and freedom of participation to meetings. Often used to keep security, these types of technologies might become a way to repress. As a matter of fact, many studies highlight the necessity of guaranteeing transparency and the democratic supervision when using the AI to comply the law.

This is not an isolated element, but it must be considered in a context already characterized by the destruction of democratic principles which has been going on for years. Even in the past Orban made actions against the fundamental rights, from limiting the free press to the independence of the magistrature. For this reason, Hungary is under the infringement procedure for systemic violations of the fundamental values of the EU (art. 7 of the Treaty of the European Union).

The several international participants commenting this measure highlighted the obvious violations of the human rights. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) states, “We are deeply concerned at legislation passed this week in Hungary that results in arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions on the rights of LGBTIQ+ individuals to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and privacy[2]”.

The civil society also commented on it. According to Human Rights Watch, this measure is part of the worrying authoritarian governance led by Orban’s government. Amnesty International defined it as a “head-on attack” to LGBTQ+ rights.

Introducing the facial recognition without a public consultation or an independent supervision, this law goes against the European law about the digital governance. According to the GDPR, biometric data processing must be balanced, transparent and limited to a specific purpose. Furthermore, the AI Act forbids explicitly the usage of biometric surveillance in real time in public spaces, except those situations leading to serious and forthcoming threats.

For this reason, many members of the European Parliament affirmed to be against this measure. The co-President of the monitoring group on IA at the European Parliament, Brando Benifei, highlighted how the Hungarian law is an evident violation of the new European legislation on IA.

The Hungarian situation shows clearly the risks of technology when used to control and repress. It makes evident how dangerous these tools are for the protection not only of the privacy but also of the democracy. Will the Europe aiming to protect citizens’ rights be able to protect them from abuses?

Mondo Internazionale APS – Rights Reserved ® 2025

[1] https://www.rferl.org/a/hungary-magyar-orban-protests/33349014.html (last access: 10/05/2025, 11:47)

[2] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/03/concern-hungarys-new-anti-lgbtiq-law (last access: 10/05/2025, 12:08)