why automated video surveillance is debated

Examined from Monday March 20 at the end of the day in the National Assembly, the bill “relating to the Olympic and Paralympic Games of 2024 and laying down various other provisions” should see its article 7 fiercely discussed. It provides for the legalization, for experimental purposes, of automated video surveillance until the end of 2024. An adjustment of the legislative framework long desired by manufacturers in the sector but which is causing associations for the defense of civil liberties, left-wing MEPs and even, more recently, MEPs.

How does automated video surveillance work?

Algorithmic (VSA) or automated video surveillance technologies, sometimes called “intelligent video surveillance” by manufacturers in the sector, are all based on the same principle: using algorithms to analyze large quantities of images from video surveillance in order to bring out different information.

“Many municipalities have installed a lot of CCTV camerasdetails an employee of a company in the sector. But they are unable to process and monitor these video streams in real time. What we sell them is a solution to this problem. » Accelerated visualization of long hours of images, real-time alert system in the event of the presence of individuals or vehicles on a given perimeter, detection of gatherings of individuals or raiding, identification of suspicious behavior… the possibilities are endless. multiple.

On the different principle of facial recognition, the VSA nevertheless offers identification tools that are close to it. This is, for example, the case of the Briefcam solution, an Israeli company among the market leaders, which gives video operators the possibility of filtering the people filmed according to their gender, their skin color or their clothing. Many local authorities already use automatic license plate reading systems which, for example, identify users who have not paid for their parking. A practice against which the National Commission for Computing and Liberties (CNIL) warned as early as 2020.

What does the current law say?

Video surveillance in public spaces is prohibited by default but authorized under conditions since 1995: each installation of a camera must be subject to prefectural authorization. According to the CNIL, this principle of “lawfulness” (a technology cannot be deployed without a text explicitly authorizing it) applies to other surveillance tools that potentially infringe fundamental freedoms, such as automated video surveillance. “Such devices are in no way a simple technical “extension” of existing cameras, rated the institution in 2022. They modify their very nature through their capacity for detection and automated analysis. »

Despite this prohibition in principle, the legal vagueness that remains around the VSA has enabled many municipalities or organizations to seize it. This is for example the case of Valenciennes, in the North, which until 2021 used Huawei technologies to identify suspicious behavior and intrusions in certain perimeters. Or even the town of Libourne, in Gironde, and the RATP, which has been experimenting with these technologies since 2018.

Why is the VSA criticized?

“Video surveillance by algorithm poses the same problems as facial recognition”, judge Noémie Levain, lawyer at La Quadrature du Net. This main French association for the defense of public and digital freedoms denounces “the same risks to public freedoms and the same possibilities of abuse by law enforcement, whose racist practices have been widely documented”. A criticism widely shared by Amnesty International, which also points to in a statement released in Januarythe low effectiveness of these technologies in the fight against crime.

They are however a necessity, retort in chorus the government, the parliamentarians of the majority and the organizations representing the companies of the sector. Everyone sees in the VSA an additional means of guaranteeing the maintenance of order during the sporting event, without opting for a technology as intrusive as facial recognition. “We followed the recommendations of the CNIL to the letter”assured, at the beginning of March, the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, before the Committee on Laws and Cultural Affairs of the National Assembly.

The experimental phase provided for by the bill runs until December 31, 2024, but all the associations are worried about a long-term generalization. “This law is a Trojan horse to permanently install automated video protection in public spaces”denounces Noémie Levain. “A classic strategy” major sporting events, according to the activist, widely documented by Jules Boykoff, author of Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics (Back, 2016). “Since 2001, all the Olympic Games have served as a pretext for the deployment of new security technologies”thus decides with the World the American academic. In 2012, for example, the London Games led to the generalization of video surveillance in the streets of the capital. Also deployed on an experimental basis during the 2018 Football World Cup in Russia, facial recognition is still used today to monitor the entire Moscow population.