EFF, TEDIC and CEJIL Challenge Secrecy in the Use of Face Recognition in Paraguay
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, TEDIC, and CEJIL have filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights against Paraguay, alleging the government unlawfully withheld public information about its facial recognition surveillance system. The case centers on cameras installed by the Ministry of the Interior and National Police in 2019 and the state's refusal to provide transparency about how the technology is used.
Why this matters: When a government runs facial recognition on public spaces and refuses to say how, residents have no way to know if they are being tracked, misidentified, or flagged. Paraguay is not unique here. Police and interior ministries across the region have quietly built surveillance infrastructure with little public record. This case is essentially an argument that access to information is not optional when the technology at issue watches everyone. If the state can deploy mass biometric surveillance in secret, accountability becomes nearly impossible.
Who should care: Lawyers · Privacy officers · Compliance · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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