Paris (AFP)
Secretary of State for Digital Cédric O called on Tuesday for a limited experimentation with facial recognition in France, to prevent it from finally imposing itself brutally and without debate in favor of a crisis.
"What history shows is that when there is technology available, in the end you end up using it," said the Secretary of State during the presentation of the confidence barometer of Acsel, a professional association for the digital economy.
The risk is "that one day there is an attack in France, and that a government decides to go there overnight", he said.
Better to organize now a "phase of experimentation in various use cases, and then to have a public debate and take decisions", in particular on the possible "red lines" that should not be crossed, a he indicated.
France "will never go to the Chinese example" where facial recognition algorithms "allow everyone to recognize everyone on the street," said Cédric O.
But "there are opportunities for facial recognition in the field of health, private use, public order and security," he said, calling for a "society debate in the way for example the one on bioethics laws ".
Experimentation is necessary to get accurate information about the potential of these technologies, he said.
"As Secretary of State for Digital, I don't know if facial recognition is effective in recognizing people on the public highway, I have no idea," he said.
"I have read the studies" of major American universities on the subject, but "I think we have to make our own opinion according to scientific protocols which must be public," he added.
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