French lawmakers say oui to Olympic video surveillance, but non for faces A bill to allow real-time video surveillance of vistors to the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics was approved by France's Senate on Tuesday and now advances to the National Assembly – but crucially bans the use of facial recognition technology. The legislation would allow security cameras and drones in and around the stadiums hosting …
In France, the Senate hasn't the last word. The National Assembly does, and can rewrite any line put by Senators into the law.
Our Senate is a congregation of old notables put there to have a nice and long pre-retirement period with plenty of advantages at the cost of the taxpayers. Its only utility is to put a hold on laws for some times, it cannot do more. Senators are not elected directly by the people, ensuring an over representation of the Right. In the last 65 years, the Right had the majority for 62 years. If we could get rid of it, it could be a nice save. However, senators will never scuttle themselves.
About video-surveillance, I'm confident in the role the French Regulator (CNIL) can play. They are independent and with sharp teeth. Even megacorps fear them. If there's a risk about data, CNIL will tell.
"Our Senate is a congregation of old notables put there to have a nice and long pre-retirement period with plenty of advantages at the cost of the taxpayers. Its only utility is to put a hold on laws for some times, it cannot do more. Senators are not elected directly by the people, ensuring an over representation of the Right. In the last 65 years, the Right had the majority for 62 years. If we could get rid of it, it could be a nice save. However, senators will never scuttle themselves.
About video-surveillance, I'm confident in the role the French Regulator (CNIL) can play. They are independent and with sharp teeth. Even megacorps fear them. If there's a risk about data, CNIL will tell."
About the senate, one advantage they have over the parliament is they're not after a nice career and won't be like little dogs drooling over their master, like the previous LRM assembly was, voting anything and everything coming from the Macron office, be it constitutional or not, in the interest of french people or not.
So, they serve their purpose of garde-fou of the parliament.
About CNIL, I'm sorry, are we speaking of the same ? Which has never controlled anything and looks the other way almost every time a law is endangering liberties ? Triggering CNIL is only achieved when you go full China scale tagging of citizens ...
As someone who has been in my fair share of football crowds, I can say with near-certainty that there are patterns of crowd movement that are indicators of "things about to kick off". Have some experienced crowd control officers monitor the cameras real-time, and they can send backup to potential hotspots ASAP. It might have already kicked off by then, but getting officers close to the scene is key. The other thing is having a bit more intelligence that can be relayed to crowd-control police in real-time. Otherwise you end up in situations like the Champions League final in Paris where French police ignored the local yoof jumping over fences and pepper-sprayed fans with tickets waiting outside the blocked turnstiles.
"Surveillance footage collected would be processed using an algorithm "whose sole purpose is to detect, in real time, predetermined events likely to present or reveal" security risks – such as terrorist acts or other "serious threats to the safety of persons," according to the proposal."
Would that not normally include the facial recognition of known terrorists faces ?
Since the technology already exists I would be very suprised that it is not being used.. France is one of Europe's major targets for terrorists, it would make sense to use the technology, we already saw the results of the Bataclan, they weren't nice.. Does Amnesty International also consider the idea that TV Cameras are filming and diffsusing peoples faces all of the time ?
This is one of those cases where I think that the technology would not be such a bad idea.. It's a public event and it is already being filmed and broadcast to the entire world..
Unless there is another side that I don't see.. I welcome other points of view
You're missing plenty.
First and foremost, that France still cares about privacy and the handling of personal information. There's plenty to do better, but we're not the US.
Known terrorist faces - you mean those grainy, decades-old pictures handed around by governments? Those are not the pawns on the ground, they're leaders, who are staying somewhat safe in caves somewhere. Those committing the acts are not known before they die doing them. So detecting a weapon, or an abandoned backpack under a bench, those are much more useful tasks.
TV cameras: they're filming some people, some of the time, and facial recognition doesn't happen on them. Their main target is the sport event, not spectators, This is very unlike surveillance cameras whose goal is to film everybody's movement, all the time.
This article is about lawmaking. It's the job of the députés (MPs) and senators to ensure that the laws they pass comply with the constitution and regulations and don't contradict other laws. DGSE and DGSI operate in a grey area , if the law inconveniences them they'll find a way to circumvent it anyway.
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