Drones back in law enforcement operations after new regulatory framework released

2023-04-30 18:00:08

Three years after their appearance in the public space during the spring 2020 confinement, the drones used by the authorities to film law enforcement operations will return to Paris on the occasion of the May Day demonstrations on Monday. , devoted this year to the opposition to the pension reform. A arrested by the Prefecture of Policedated April 28, allows the overflight of the demonstrators in the capital by three on-board cameras to prevent “attacks on the safety of persons and property” et “maintain or restore public order”.

This is one of the first authorizations issued within the legal framework defined by a recent decree from the Ministry of the Interior. The text is the culmination of three years of legal and political controversy. Prohibited by the Council of State during the health crisis due to a lack of supervision, the practice had been reintroduced by the vote of the global security law in 2021, but the provisions had been censored by the Constitutional Council. A revised version appeared in the law relating to criminal responsibility and internal security, passed a few months later.

The new decree, which resulted from it, authorizes the use of drones by the police, gendarmes, customs officers or soldiers, in certain cases for “the prevention of attacks on the safety of persons and property in particularly exposed places”pour “gathering security” on public roads, as well as “support” agents ” on the ground ” for the purpose of maintaining or restoring public order. “These are administrative police purposes: it is a question of preventing, securing and helping, not of collecting evidence or investigating as in legal proceedings”says the Ministry of the Interior in a text presenting the new measures.

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Since the publication of the decree on April 19, cameras have already been mounted on drones or helicopters during the rally against the A69 motorway project in the TarnThen near the Stade de France, in Seine-Saint-Denis, Saturday evening, for the final of the Coupe de France between Toulouse and Nantes. Besides Paris, the 1^is-May, the demonstrations planned in Le Havre will also be filmed from the sky, according to a prefectural decreewhich advances the interest of “have a wide-angle view to guarantee the safety of the procession (…) while limiting the engagement of ground forces”. “There is no less intrusive device that achieves the same ends”continues the document.

In Mayotte, another example, a camera on a drone will be used for two months in Mamoudzou as part of the “Wuambushu” security operation against illegal immigration. The prefecture considers its use necessary because the agents intervene “in areas (…) where there is no video surveillance system, in places that are difficult to access which make physical surveillance by police officers impossible, immediately spotted”.

Retention seven days, interiors removed

The law provides that images captured by on-board cameras (which do not record sound) can be transmitted live to command centers. According to the decree, they will be kept for a maximum of seven days by the authorities, then deleted if they are not investigated.

In the first forty-eight hours after their registration, further specifies the regulations, the agents will have to DELETE “the images of the interior of the residences and, in a specific way, their entries when the interruption of the recording could not take place taking into account the circumstances of the intervention”. The indiscriminate capture of public and private spaces by drones is one of the sensitive points in the evolution of practices, current video surveillance systems not being authorized to film windows or doors of housing.

Read also (in 2020): Article reserved for our subscribers The Council of State orders the Paris Police Prefecture to leave its drones on the ground

The National Commission for Computing and Freedoms (CNIL), which warns of potential threats to privacy due to the use of drones since 2020, has asked the Ministry of the Interior that the doctrines of employment be transmitted to him. These do not appear in the decree and will have to detail the “cases of use, conditions of use and behaviors to be adopted” by the various law enforcement agencies (police, gendarmerie, customs, border police).

The World with AFP