The Press Stories
The Ministry of the Interior is in view of La Quadrature du Net. On Sunday September 25, the association announced that it had filed three joint complaints against Place Beauvau, condemning the use of facial recognition, recording and video surveillance. After the association collected the mandate of nearly 13,000 people through a signature campaign on the site, they were filed with the National Commission for Computing and Freedom (CNIL). complaint.technopolice.fr.
La Quadrature du Net, which presents itself as a defender of fundamental freedoms in the digital environment, was inspired by the collective complaints it filed against Kafam in 2018 under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These practices resulted in fines of 50 million and 746 million euros for Google and Amazon, respectively.
“Failure to comply with security duty”
This time, the Society for the Defense of Digital Freedoms wants to attack what it calls “The Four Pillars” of one “Mass Surveillance System” : “Video Surveillance”, “Automatic Behavior Detection”, “filing” And “Face Recognition”.
In the complaint regarding video surveillance, the association tries to highlight “Influence of Ministry of Home Affairs on Installation of Surveillance Cameras (Approvals, Subsidies)”Prove later “How these devices are illegal because their proportions can never be justified”, the lawyer at La Quadrature du Net explained to Agence France-Presse Noemi Levine. The aim is to withdraw all cameras installed in public places.
Leon environmentalists’ dilemma over video surveillance
The head of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Pascal Mailhos, has been seeking for months a contract to relocate video surveillance cameras from the city of Lyon to the command room of the national police. Set up in the nearby town of Villeurbanne (Rhône), the system allows the police to control municipal cameras during extreme events. Select environmentalists refuse to do so, calling it censorship “Rate the Application Question”.
There are 571 surveillance cameras in the city of Lyon, with a municipal surveillance center. The environmentalist majority has added six nomadic cameras and announces it will get six more in the coming months, but doesn’t want to go any further. “The Court of Auditors asks us to evaluate public policies, and we follow in the footsteps of the Court of Auditors”Grégory Doucet, the mayor of the city, reasoned on July 6 in the preface of the municipal council dedicated to improving the municipal police.
From the prefecture’s point of view, the censorship of the use of cameras appears to be a pretext, intended to postpone the development of video surveillance. “We have a very clear and practical view on security. I give priority to public peace”, however Gregory Doucet promised during the town hall. While the environmentalist mayor reminds us that conservation is essentially the sovereign task of the state, he takes his part. “There is a question about guaranteeing the balance between security and respect for public freedom. We don’t want to replace human resources with cameras.”, recognizes Mohammed Cihi, deputy security officer for the city of Lyon, during a conversation on the sidelines of the council. The municipal executive is in an awkward dilemma on the question of video security cameras, a reluctance in principle for good management of the devices torn between its official version and generalized monitoring, not assuming it openly.
The second complaint is about TAJ files (Automated Processing of Criminal Records), which include “Eight Million” Face pictures. The third relates to TES files (Secure Electronic Titles), which contain any applicant’s identity card or passport photographs.
As for TAJ, the association condemns the illegality of the collected data “A large amount of information is not relevant to the legal action, or has not been updated”. It also mentions that the police and gendarmes use it “Outside of any legal proceedings, especially during identity checks”. Regarding TES, the complaint specifically condemns “Despite the risks of diversion, the Minister breaches the security duty by choosing a centralized architecture”, the lawyer explained. The association is seeking to remove these photos.
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