Real-Time Biometrics: Banned, With Exceptions

The EU AI Act bans real-time remote biometric identification in public places. In plain English: no live face-scanning crowds.

Then it carves out narrow exceptions, all for law enforcement, all fenced in. Searching for missing persons or trafficking victims. Preventing a genuine, imminent threat. Finding suspects of serious crimes. And even then, it generally requires prior judicial authorization, with strict limits on how and when.

Notice the structure: the default is no, and every yes comes with walls around it. That's deliberate. Biometric surveillance is the kind of power that's easy to expand and nearly impossible to roll back once it's normal.

When a law builds this many fences around an exception, believe the fences. The ban is the point.

I explain frameworks; I don't give legal counsel.