- A mobile application now allows gendarmes to take notes during their interventions, in particular sometimes sensitive personal data.
- Several associations fear a violation of privacy and a filing of citizens.
- The national gendarmerie ensures that this is only a modernization of its tools aimed at simplifying the work of the teams in the field.
Filing or simple modernization? For ten days, the gendarmes have had a new tool: GendNotes. During their interventions, this mobile application allows them to take note of personal data on their phone, rather than by hand on a notebook. A means of facilitating the work of the police on the ground and which is part of the plan to modernize the security forces.
On the application, various fields are used to enter data, such as the identity of the person, photographs, an address, a telephone number, or even the identification of the vehicle. As specified in the decree authorizing this "automated processing of personal data", the platform also has free comment areas. The gendarmes will be able to inform there “in case of absolute necessity”, information relating to “racial or ethnic origin, political, philosophical or religious opinions, trade union membership, health or sexual life or the sexual orientation ”. A point which worries certain associations.
"This absolute necessity is, in practice, never verified"
"This is extremely sensitive personal data and it is a gendarme who, alone, on the ground, will decide whether to collect it is an absolute necessity, worries Malik Salemkour, president of the League for Human Rights joined by 20 Minutes . Even if the gendarme is in good faith, that is not enough, it must be much better supervised, that there be safeguards. For its part, La Quadrature du Net also questions the proper application of the decree. "This absolute necessity is, in practice, never verified," wrote the association in a press release.
"As when writing by hand in their notebooks, the gendarmes will note only what can have an interest for the legal procedure and allow to qualify the offense, assures to 20 Minutes Maddy Scheurer, spokesperson for the gendarmerie national. If a same-sex couple is assaulted and hears a homophobic insult, their sexual orientation may be indicated, but if they were assaulted by a person who wanted to steal their laptops, the gendarme will not specify it, because this does nothing. For its part, the CNIL, which said it was in favor of the decree, insists that the collection of this kind of data should not be "systematic" and "subject to appropriate guarantees for the rights and freedoms of the concerned person ".
Data accessible to judicial and administrative authorities
Second point of friction: access to this data. The decree specifies that the personal information contained in the free comment zones will be kept for three months. The duration may be extended but may not exceed one year. During this period, the information is accessible to the gendarmes who collected it, to the judicial authorities, but not only. "In the strict limit of the need to know", they can also be transmitted to the prefect and sub-prefect with territorial jurisdiction or to the mayor of the municipality concerned.
"As this transmission does not take place via GendNotes, the Commission recalled that it could only be carried out if sufficient measures guarantee the confidentiality and security of the data transmitted", indicates the CNIL. For Malik Salemkour, the limits mentioned in the decree are not enough. “We end up with files that can live independently of the gendarme who is investigating. Highly sensitive personal data can be sent to local elected officials. "La Quadrature du Net reports that, according to the decree," the aim of GendNotes is to facilitate the transmission of recorded data to "other data processing", without defining or limiting these other treatments. One can fear that GendNotes comes to feed an infinity of files, of the intelligence services for example, and to be diverted for purposes of political surveillance ”.
Maddy Scheurer, who disputes any possibility of filing or cross-checking files, specifies that the data transmitted to the prefects and sub-prefects is only done in the case of administrative procedures. “Regarding mayors, when we communicate with them, we do not give personal information, but only information on situations or offenses that have occurred in their sector. This is what we did before, it will not change. It also indicates that if the information written in the dedicated fields is automatically transmitted for the report, this is not the case for sensitive data entered in the free comments. “These must be retyped at the gendarmerie. "
Not secure enough?
Finally, from a data security point of view, the CNIL "strongly regrets that the Ministry has not provided for encryption measures for terminals and storage media", specifying that this type of security measure " appears to be the only reliable way to guarantee the confidentiality of data stored on mobile equipment in the event of loss or theft ”.
"The application is not installed on our personal laptops but on our Neo phones," explains Maddy Scheurer. They were designed based on the recommendations of the National Information Systems Security Agency (Anssi). They are already secure and encrypted. "
Unconvinced, the Human Rights League has decided to file a lawsuit against the GendNotes file.
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