May tridimensional face recognition be employed for biometric surveillance? What are the technological and legal problems involved? The tentative to give an answer to these questions was the theme for a 3DFace meeting held in Roma (Italia) on 20 September 2007 at the Conference Center of the Ergife Hotel. The event, coordinated by Mario Savastano (IBB-National Research Council of Italy), responsible of the 3Dface project's WP 4.2 on "Privacy, Cross-Jurisdictional and Societal Aspects", included seven presentations given by:
The meeting represented an important moment for WP 4.2 since it gave the possibility of gathering experts in different fields to discuss about a sensitive issue such as the biometric surveillance. Even if technical problems are still playing an important role in this field and experimental results are often controversial, basically all speakers of the meeting agreed that the regulatory context, with particular reference to privacy, is the most important factor which could determine the success of a surveillance project, at least in the European meaning of personal data protection.