“Augmented” cameras at the 2024 Olympics

by time news

Allow the police to spot a movement of the crowd or an abandoned package as quickly as possible, but also a person whose behavior is considered abnormal (because they are running in the opposite direction from the crowd or have been immobile for a long time). These are some of the features enabled by the so-called augmented (or smart) cameras that should be placed in and around the stadiums during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

And even beyond: the bill which has just been adopted in committee and will be examined in public session in the Senate from January 24 plans to extend this experiment until the summer of 2025. The government considers that before taking stock of this device for exploiting images by artificial intelligence, it will be necessary to have tested it during other events deemed to be at risk for security (concerts, etc.).

Reinforcement of guarantees

Security: this is undoubtedly the heart of this text relating to the Olympic Games, whose 19 articles provide for a certain number of derogations and experiments.

The Senate Law Commission adopted the text on Wednesday January 18, but added several “precision amendments that strengthen safeguards”, as the rapporteur Agnès Canayer (LR) welcomed to Public Senate. The public should be informed “by any appropriate means” the use of these algorithmic tools… except when “this information would conflict with the objectives pursued”. Several LR amendments attempted to push video surveillance even further, by integrating facial recognition, for example, but they were deemed inadmissible.

Even experimental, the deployment of these augmented cameras constitutes a “turning” according to the CNIL (National Commission for Computing and Liberties). “It’s not just an extension of conventional video surveillance; it’s a change of nature”, insists Marie Duboys Fresney, lawyer at the Cnil. People are no longer just filmed but analyzed in an automated way, in real time, which represents a risk “on the exercise of freedoms in the public space”whether it is the freedom to come and go, to demonstrate or to gather. “We have been calling for a public debate on these new uses of video for years: what society do we want? »continues Marie Duboys Fresney.

Techniques already tested

Automated video surveillance has already been deployed on an experimental basis in several cities in France – “at least fifty”, according to the association for the defense of digital freedoms La quadrature du Net, which identifies them through its “Technopolice” initiative. Marseille, Nice, Valenciennes, but also the Isère village of Moirans… The association denounces public contracts concluded “in opacity” et “outside any legal framework” between these municipalities and private service providers.

In Vannes, the most video-surveilled city in Brittany, resident and lawyer Raphaël Balloul says he discovered the project to install two augmented cameras (one for pedestrians, the other for vehicles) after having peeled, in the fall 2021, administrative documents open to the public. “Even the municipal opposition was not aware”, says the one who filed an appeal to the administrative court of Rennes more than a year ago. The trial continues, and the municipality today denies having wanted to use these algorithmic devices.

A “strategy of the fait accompli”

“France will legalize these technologies even before the administrative justice has been able to rule on the various cases in progress”, denounces Félix Tréguer, member of La quadrature du Net in Marseille, where a dispute has been going on for two years. These activists castigate a “strategy of the fait accompli” and deplore that the parliamentary debate is taking place in the midst of pension reform.

The text will only be examined once (instead of twice) by the Senate and then the Assembly, the government having initiated the accelerated procedure. In its impact study, the executive specifies that it is « indispensable » to begin the experiment as soon as the law comes into force, i.e. several months before the Olympic Games, “in order to train the algorithms and have the most efficient tools possible during this large-scale event”.

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The other provisions of the text

The 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games Bill provides for several deviations from the normal rules and some experimentation.

To fight against dopingnew analysis techniques will be authorized (examination of genetic characteristics or comparison of the genetic fingerprints of athletes).

In terms of securityin addition to the use of artificial intelligence in video surveillance, the use of body scanners will be possible at the entrance to stadiums and other sports venues hosting more than 300 people.

Moreover, shops will be able to open on Sunday in the cities that will host the sports competitions or in the neighboring cities, after agreement of the employees concerned.

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