“Privacy, Data Protection and Data-driven Technologies” has just been published by the internationally renowned publishing house Routledge. The book aims to address the challenges posed by technology to existing data protection laws and to find balance between the development of technology and the protection of individuals’ privacy. The editors of the book, Prof. Martin Ebers and Prof. Karin Sein, colleagues at the University of Tartu, have brought together Europe’s leading scholars in law and technology for this purpose.
We are glad that one of them is Dr. Monika Žalnieriūtė, Senior Research Fellow at the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences Institute of Law. In the 12th chapter of the book “Beyond Procedural Fetishism: The Inadequacy of GDPR in Regulating Facial Recognition Technologies and Public Space Surveillance“, she examines in detail the phenomenon of procedural fetishism – focusing on procedural safeguards. In the spring, the researcher presented this topic to participants at a conference of the Lithuanian Association of Criminologists.
In the chapter, M. Žalnieriūtė discusses the rapidly expanding use of the facial recognition technologies and the inadequate regulation of the European Union‘s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). According to the author, the GDPR tends to focus on procedural safeguards in the hope that it will be sufficient to limit the powers of institutions and private businesses in relation to data protection. Finally, the researcher concludes that the need for stricter regulation of facial recognition technologies is inevitable, and that new regulations will have to be characterised by redistribution of power, redrawing boundaries and democratisation of technology companies.
The English chapter of Dr. Monika Žalnieriūtė is available here (chargeable access): https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003502791-17/beyond-procedural-fetishism-monika-zalnieriute
Zalnieriute, M. (2024). Beyond Procedural Fetishism: The Inadequacy of GDPR in Regulating Facial Recognition Technologies and Public Space Surveillance. In M. Ebers and K. Sein (Eds.), Privacy, Data Protection and Data-driven Technologies (1st ed., pp. 328–367). Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003502791-17.