Three digital-rights organizations have asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to compel Paraguay to disclose how it uses facial recognition, arguing that the state’s refusal to release details about the technology turns it into an opaque tool for mass surveillance. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Paraguayan group TEDIC, and the Centre for Justice and International Law filed the petition over what they describe as the arbitrary denial of access to public information.
The case dates to 2019, when Paraguay’s Ministry of the Interior and the National Police installed surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition in the capital, Asunción. Maricarmen Sequera, a lawyer and executive director of TEDIC, filed an information request seeking the protocols behind the system and the personal data processing involved, including whether the state had carried out human rights or data protection impact assessments before deploying it. According to the petitioners, the state denied most of the request on the grounds that the implementation details were confidential security information, and Paraguayan courts ultimately sustained that denial.
The petition, filed June 19, argues that the refusal disregarded Inter-American standards on the right to access information, including in matters of national security, and that it violated rights to privacy and to informational self-determination. Beyond ordering Paraguay to hand over the requested records, the groups want the Commission to require the state to adopt permanent transparency mechanisms covering the acquisition, contracting, financing, and use of surveillance technologies, especially those that process biometric data or rely on artificial intelligence. They are also asking for mandatory human rights impact assessments before such systems are bought or deployed.
The complaint situates Paraguay within a regional pattern of secrecy around state surveillance, an issue that has grown as monitoring tools spread across Latin America, including the expansion documented when Clearview AI found a receptive market in the region. It also lands as governments elsewhere wrestle with disclosure rules, with US states advancing their own facial recognition laws in the absence of national legislation. The petitioners say the case could set a precedent for transparency and privacy protections across the Inter-American system.
Sources: Electronic Frontier Foundation
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By Cass Kennedy
