The move flies in the face of Hungary’s obligations to protect fundamental rights and prohibit discrimination under treaties it has ratified, notably the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights.

It also shows reckless disregard for European law, including Article 21 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, which explicitly prohibits discrimination based upon sexual orientation; and the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, which limits police use of facial recognition technology.

Little wonder then that, in a grim coincidence, the legislative change happened on the very same day a new report published concluded: “Democratic standards [in Hungary] have degraded to such a degree that it would not gain access to the EU today.” 

That it came two years after Orbán declared Hungary as an “incubator where experiments are done on the future of conservative policies” and a place “where we didn’t just talk about defeating the progressives and liberals and causing a conservative Christian political turn, but we actually did it” is, frankly, chilling.

The future is grim

Because, amid rising conservatism, if Hungary is the experimental zone right-wing politicians look to for inspiration on how to destroy hard-won fundamental rights and silence dissent with dangerous and discriminatory technology, the future is grim — for everyone.

As Europe’s International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association warned last month, these attacks against LGBTI+ people are increasingly serving as a “testing ground for laws that erode democracy itself”.

As we contemplate that future, it’s useful to consider the trajectory of Hungary’s democratic demise through a series of legislative changes around the right to protest, LGBTI+ rights, and its use of facial recognition technology.

In 2018, the Hungarian parliament restricted the right to protest by granting police broader discretion to ban protests, and banned the wearing of face coverings during public events, including protests.

In response to covid, Orbán ​​passed a bill to allow him to rule indefinitely by decree, with individuals who publicised facts deemed "untrue or distorted" facing jail. In April 2020, a 64-year-old man was taken into police custody after he published a Facebook post in which he criticised Orbán’s covid policy.

Also in 2020, Hungary’s parliament ended legal recognition for trans people, and adopted anti-LGBTI+ laws, including a de facto ban on adoption by same-sex couples.

In 2021, the parliament passed a law banning gay people from featuring in school educational materials or TV shows for under-18s, and banned protests in support of Palestinians in 2023.

Orbán’s Hungary has also been ahead of most EU member states when it comes to law enforcement use of facial recognition technology. 

In 2021, an EU-wide study showed how, since 2019, Hungary had been operating a single centralised searchable system, allowing police to identify any citizen from their face, as part of its Dragonfly Project, a system which collects, stores and searches, in real-time, video surveillance footage from 35,000 CCTV cameras.

Additionally, during covid, Hungary introduced a mandatory home quarantine app which used facial recognition technology to verify that people were at the location they were supposed to be. People would be randomly prompted to send police a selfie and with that, together with the person’s location data, the police could determine if the person was where they were supposed to be.

The use of facial recognition technology to identify or frighten protestors, in the manner Orbán envisages, has been documented elsewhere — in Minnesota after the death of George Floyd; in India, Hong Kong, Colombia and Chile.

But with this move on European soil, it’s a cautionary reminder of several things.

Democracy is fragile

Democracy is fragile and we cannot take for granted our fundamental rights, free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, and a free press. If we are not vigilant about our rights, they will be slowly eroded.

On top of that, once dangerous police surveillance infrastructure such as facial recognition technology is in place, its initial stated purpose to combat crime can be easily swayed by the winds of political change and used against us.

Although no stalwart for human rights, consider Russia. It introduced facial recognition technology to "ensure visitor safety for the 2018 Fifa World Cup"; then, like Hungary, expanded it to monitor covid quarantine compliance; and then it was used to crack down on protestors demonstrating against the invasion of Ukraine.

Protest movements provide the means for a population to come together, voice their dissent and demand change. The right to do so relatively anonymously has been fundamental to that.

But if the deployment of surveillance tools, such as facial recognition technology, and the passing of bans on face coverings at protests threaten that right, measures which the Irish Government plans to implement, we risk chilling that fundamental right and damaging democratic participation and public trust. The Irish Government should take note.

We cannot assume those in power in our country will always strive to protect and fulfil our human rights. We must protect our rights, push back against the embedding of a dangerous surveillance infrastructure, resist efforts to limit our privacy and our freedoms, and guard against future mission creep.

• Olga Cronin is human rights and surveillance senior policy officer at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties