Olympics 2024: French Parliament adopts Olympic bill and its "augmented cameras"

A surveillance camera at the Élysée Palace in Paris, June 2019. AP - Lewis Joly

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3 min

By a final vote in the Senate, Parliament definitively adopted Wednesday, April 12, the text prepared by the government for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

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The vote on the compromise recorded in the joint committee was won by 252 votes "for" and 27 "against" (communists and ecologists). The Socialists abstained. The National Assembly had largely approved the text on Tuesday. But left-wing deputies have already warned that they will refer the matter to the Constitutional Council.

This text "incorporates all the measures essential to the smooth running of the Games (...), while ensuring full respect for the rights and freedoms of our fellow citizens," said Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra. The Senate "has multiplied the safeguards, controls, guarantees," noted the rapporteur of the text, Senator Les Républicains Agnès Canayer.

Controversial cameras

Algorithmic video surveillance, the text's flagship measure, nevertheless raises concerns. The goal: that algorithms feed on images from cameras and drones to more quickly spot potentially dangerous "events", such as the beginning of a crowd movement or the abandonment of a luggage, and report them to security teams who scrutinize gatherings behind their screens. But the list of "events" to be detected will be fixed later, which does not reassure opponents of the text.

The experiment, which could begin as soon as promulgation and concern the next Rugby World Cup (8 September-28 October), should theoretically end on 31 March 2025. The images, which can be analyzed using algorithms from private companies, may be kept for a maximum period of 12 months. The executive and the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, invoke the need to secure the millions of visitors and insist on the safeguards and the absence of facial recognition.

But left-wing elected officials, associations such as Amnesty and La Quadrature du net or the National Bar Council are against it. Some believe that the Olympic Games (26 July-11 August) and the Paralympic Games (28 August-8 September) will only serve as a showcase to perpetuate these "augmented cameras", and generalize their use to the surveillance of the entire population.

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"Screenings"

Other measures in the bill are already supposed to continue after the Games, such as the extension of the scope of "screenings", the conduct of administrative investigations on individuals. Participants and accredited persons at competition venues and fan zones may be targeted, but not fans.

The government's draft provides for the creation of two offences: one punishing illegal entry, in a situation of recidivism, in a sports arena. The other punishing entering the field or field of competition. In particular, environmentalists fear that the measure could be used against climate activists. A mandatory stadium ban for serious security breaches would also be created.

More consensual measure: the text provides for the creation of a health center in the Olympic Village in Saint-Denis, although the opposition regrets that the structure does not survive the Olympics, in a department that lacks caregivers. It will also strengthen the authorities' anti-doping arsenal, including tests to detect forms of genetic doping. Finally, it provides for derogations from the rules of Sunday rest, which will run from June 15 to September 30, despite the opposition of the parliamentary left, and accompanying devices for the transport of spectators with disabilities.

(

With AFP)

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