Extracted from publication
European Review of Digital Administration & Law

Defending the Rule of Law from Threats Posed by AI-Enabled Surveillance Systems in the Hands of Law Enforcement Authorities

DOI: 10.53136/979122182111619
Pages: 183-193
Publication date: November 2025
Publisher: Aracne
SSD: IUS/10

ABSTRACT This concluding article reflects on the preceding contributions taken as a whole. It argues that they reflect a troubling turn towards authoritarianism, and calls on scholars to take forward the task of critical inquiry to facilitate urgently needed democratic debate to help our communities decide on and establish the boundaries of legitimate and lawful use of facial recognition technologies.

KEYWORDS Facial Recognition Technologies - Democratic Trust

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction. – 2. Setting the scene: what explains LEA’s interest in FRT?. – 3. LEA experimentation at the local level with significant national variation. – 4. Rule of law ‘gaslighting’ and the authoritarian turn. – 5. What can we do?