Gauthier Delomez with AFP 15:36 p.m., April 17, 2023

Parliament definitively adopted Wednesday, April 12, the bill for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, which includes an important security component and in particular a flagship measure, algorithmic video surveillance. Europe 1 takes stock of this project and why it raises concerns in the opposition.

It is a controversial article that will fuel the debate, less than a year and a half before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (July 26-August 11). On Wednesday, April 12, Parliament definitively adopted, by a final vote of the Senate, the text prepared by the government for the global sporting event. This includes an important "protection" component, including its flagship measure, algorithmic video surveillance. And it is the latter that raises the most concern. Ecologists and Insoumise also announced Monday, April 17 an appeal to the Constitutional Council.

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Images kept for up to 12 months

Why so much tension? For part of the opposition, this measure violates the "right to respect for private life". Concretely, algorithmic video surveillance consists of using images from cameras and drones to feed algorithms. These would then automatically alert the security teams, who view the images in real time, of a potentially risky event (crowd movement, abandonment of luggage,...).

The images, which can be analyzed using algorithms from private companies, may be kept for a maximum period of 12 months. And for now, it's just an experiment. It could begin as soon as it is promulgated and concern the next Rugby World Cup (8 September-28 October), and should theoretically end on 31 March 2025. The list of events to be monitored will be determined later.

The fear of a perpetuation of "augmented cameras"

The executive and the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, invoke the need to secure the millions of visitors, insist on safeguards and the absence of facial recognition. The Senate "has multiplied the safeguards, controls, guarantees," also noted Agnès Canayer, the LR rapporteur of the text. In addition, it "integrates 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.

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 and 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. For the communist Pierre Laurent, "the state of exception created by the Olympic Games is used, in total, to pass security laws that will remain thereafter and that pose many problems". The ecologist Guy Benarroche regretted "an unbridled security vision and so far from the values of Olympism".

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Other measures in the bill are already supposed to continue after the Games, such as extending the scope of "screening", the conduct of administrative investigations on individuals. Participants and accredited persons at competition venues and fan zones may be targeted, but not fans. The text will enter into force about a year after the fiasco of the Champions League final at the Stade de France.