Francesco Paolo Levantino (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa) has posted “Assessing the Risks of Emotion Recognition Technology in Domestic Security Settings: What Safeguards against the Rise of ‘Emotional Dominance’?” on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In light of the growing interest in biometric technologies among public authorities, civil society, and international organisations, this chapter focusses on some risks associated with the use of Emotion Recognition Technology (ERT) by Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). In fact, despite significant attention being directed towards Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) and its uses for analogous purposes, ERT has received comparatively limited scrutiny. The chapter argues that this imbalance is reflected in the European Union’s AI Act, which inadequately addresses the potential risks associated with ERT – including its capacity to generate forms of ‘emotional dominance’. By contextualising ERT within the broader category of biometric systems, the discussion highlights the distinctive characteristics of ERT, while detailing its similarities and differences with FRT and biometric categorisation systems. The analysis shows that, beyond the intuitive perception of ERT as more intrusive due to its focus on extracting emotional states from bodily cues, its contested scientific foundations raise substantial concerns regarding its deployment in the security sector. Before some concluding remarks, the chapter draws historical parallels between the military origins of some biometric technologies and their adaptation for law enforcement, illustrating how the integration of military technologies into LEAs’ practices can affect their relationship with fundamental rights and freedoms in democratic societies. Also, it specifies how the AI Act classifies the use of ERT in law enforcement and highlights the core issues it identifies in this respect. The chapter emphasises the need for more robust regulatory frameworks to protect against the interferences posed by ERT in the context of law enforcement, asserting that existing protections under international and European human rights law should serve as a litmus test for the deployment of modern technologies by LEAs.