Facial Recognition at Protests: Why We All Need to Pay Attention

Imagine you're at a protest. You’re holding a sign, maybe wearing a mask—not to hide anything, just to stay anonymous. You're there to peacefully speak your mind, to stand up for something you care about. But above you, drones are buzzing or cameras are silently recording everything. What you don't realize? Your face is being scanned, analyzed, and saved—maybe even used against you later.

Sounds like something out of a dystopian movie, right? Unfortunately, this is very real. A recent report from netzpolitik.org lays out how facial recognition is being used around the world—to track, monitor, and intimidate protesters.

Surveillance over Democracy?

According to Amnesty International, at least 78 countries now use facial recognition technology to identify people at protests. And no, it’s not just about stopping crime—it’s often very clearly about controlling dissent.

In India, for example, drones are sent to protests to scan faces from the sky. People who are identified can have their passports taken away. In Iran, if a woman is caught on camera without a headscarf, she’ll automatically get a threatening text message. In the U.S., private groups are using facial recognition to hunt down pro-Palestinian activists in an effort to get them deported.

This isn’t theory. This is happening—right now.

Closer Than You Think: What About Germany?

Think this is just an issue "out there"? Think again. Germany’s using facial recognition too. After the G20 protests in Hamburg, police used software to match video footage of protesters with a massive image database. That database includes around 7.6 million portrait photos—many from asylum procedures or police records—collected from people who never agreed to be part of that kind of surveillance.

The Real Issue: Are We Still Free to Speak Up?

What really worries me isn’t just the technology—it’s the effect it has. If people start thinking twice about going to a protest because they’re scared of being identified and punished later, we’ve got a serious problem. That fear is enough to silence voices—and that’s the beginning of something deeply undemocratic.

As Christoffer Horlitz from Amnesty Germany puts it: “If people are afraid to show their face at a protest because they fear being persecuted, then something is seriously wrong.”