Meta- and Content Data in the "Real World": Some Rule of Law Reflections

Abstract

As AI-powered technologies increasingly mediate everyday interactions, individuals risk becoming "living sources" of both meta-data and content-data about their "offline" lives and activities. This paper explores how the datafication of physical spaces – through biometric identification systems, emotion recognition technology, and other "smart devices" – transforms people into permanent objects of surveillance. Drawing from reflections on the pervasiveness of such tools, the analysis highlights the chilling effects, the interferences with "qualified yet enabling rights" like privacy and data protection, and the broader impact on freedom of thought, expression, and assembly their uses for security purposes might generate. It then shifts focus to the rule of law implications of these developments within the EU. Particular attention is given to the security exceptionalism embedded in current regulatory approaches, including the loopholes within the proposed AI Act, and the legal backsliding observed in EUROPOL’s retroactive data processing powers granted by the EU legislator. The paper ultimately questions whether current legal frameworks – often vague, exception-ridden, or procedurally weak – are adequate to prevent unchecked discretion and arbitrary state power through deployments of AI-powered surveillance. Rather than a dystopian warning, this contribution offers a grounded critique: in a world where our physical presence and activities become data, legal systems must act decisively to ensure that the foundations of our democracies are not silently eroded in the name of presumed efficiency and security gains.

Keywords: AI, Metadata, Contentdata, Biometric surveillance, Facial Recognition, Emotion Recognition, Privacy, Data protection, Rule of Law, Security Exceptionalism, Security, Surveillance, Digital Authoritarianism, Chilling Effects, Law Enforcement, Human Rights, Fundamental Rights, EU, AI Act, EUROPOL, EDPS