The Paris police headquarters authorized, Wednesday April 17, the SNCF and the RATP to experiment with algorithmic video surveillance (VSA) from Friday to Monday, on the occasion of a concert at the Défense Arena and the football match between the Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) at Olympique Lyonnais (OL).
VSA, sometimes also called “intelligent video surveillance”, consists of having images from video surveillance cameras analyzed in real time by software programmed to detect certain specific events. A first test of this technology was carried out on March 3 and 5 during two concerts by the group Depeche Mode, at the Bercy Arena in Paris. The experimentation of these tools for security purposes was voted for in the law relating to the Olympic and Paralympic Games, adopted a year ago.
“The RATP Sûreté service is authorized to implement the algorithmic processing called “Cityvision” and developed by the company Wintics from April 20 at 2 p.m. to April 21, 2024 at 6 a.m., on the occasion of the concert of the group Black Eyed Peas in the Paris La Défense Arena on April 20, 2024 », according to a decree from the Paris Police Prefecture published Wednesday. This processing will use images from cameras installed in the Nanterre-Préfecture (RER A) and La Défense – Grande-Arche (RER A and metro line 1) stations.
Intrusion detection
The second decree from the police headquarters authorizes the SNCF to operate, “from April 19 to 22”, “images from the 118 cameras installed at the Paris-Gare de Lyon station and the Garigliano bridge” for the 30e day of Ligue 1 football, which will pit PSG against OL, Sunday at the Parc des Princes. At the beginning of the month, the tests carried out at the Depeche Mode concert already concerned software from the company Wintics, which won the call for tenders in Ile-de-France and in public transport infrastructure.
The software deployed to analyze images from certain cameras will seek to detect intrusion into areas prohibited to the public or sensitive areas, crowd movements in risk areas, abnormally high density or even the presence of abandoned luggage. Use cases provided for in the implementing decreepublished in 2023.
“The operations of collection, consultation, communication, modification and deletion of images subject to algorithmic analysis, as well as the reports generated by the processing are subject to recording. This data is kept for twelve months », specify the decrees. Information panels and posters have been installed at the entrances and exits of the experimentation zones in the Gare de Lyon, in Paris, and the Garigliano bridge, as well as at the Nanterre-Préfecture and La Défense-Grande Arche stations.
If it is planned to experiment, during the Olympic Games, with this technology which raised numerous debates regarding privacy at the time of the vote of the law, the authorities recently conceded that it would only be deployed in a limited way during the Olympics. A senatorial report published on April 10 expressed doubts whether the technology could be fully operational by Games time. Facial recognition is already used in France in certain cases, but it is not included in the VSA experiment during the Paris 2024 Olympics and other major public events presenting a security risk.