The marathon continues in the National Assembly: if the motions of censure against the government are rejected, the deputies will have to continue on Monday with the examination of the bill to prepare for the 2024 Olympics, whose video surveillance component arouses strong mistrust from the left .
The exchanges could start late Monday and last until Thursday, or even Friday, with the Minister of Sports and the Olympic Games, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, and the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin.
Adopted with a comfortable majority at first reading in the Senate, dominated by the right, the eclectic text includes a large security component and comes a few months after the fiasco of the Champions League final at the Stade de France. In May 2022, spectators were stranded at the exit of the RER, others without tickets had climbed the gates of the Stade de France, families had been sprayed with tear gas or had been attacked.
Article 7 of the bill, covered by a large part of the 770 amendments tabled, provides for authorizing the coupling of video surveillance to algorithmic image processing.
The goal ? Help protect “sporting, recreational or cultural events” by automatically identifying “events”, the list of which will be defined by decree, after consulting the National Commission for Computing and Liberties (Cnil).
These movement analyzes are supposed to alert, for example, to the abandonment of luggage or the start of a crowd movement, when 13 million spectators are expected, including 600,000 for the opening ceremony on the Seine.
The experiment, which would start as soon as the promulgation and could concern the next Rugby World Cup in September-October, is supposed to stop on December 31, 2024. But the associations for the defense of freedoms see it as a diversion which would make surveillance pass of the population in another sphere.
“We will be able to keep images longer than usual to train algorithms,” said Assembly rapporteur Guillaume Vuilletet (Renaissance).
The MP, like the government, puts forward “numerous guarantees” to circumscribe the experimentation and insists that facial recognition is not on the program. Insufficient for the four groups of the left alliance Nupes, who will propose to delete article 7, as will independent deputies Liot and even two LR deputies.
“Nobody expected to see a text like that coming to France,” denounces environmentalist Sandra Regol. She castigates “a law that turns the French into guinea pigs”. “We are going to create an algorithmic surveillance market”, protests LFI deputy Paul Vannier, whose group will file a motion of rejection.
The measure is also denounced by the Amnesty and La Quadrature du Net associations, but also by the National Bar Council. Opponents of the text are convinced that the experiment will prepare the ground for a generalization of this type of surveillance.
“It’s normal that there are exceptional measures for an exceptional event”, concedes Roger Vicot (PS), “but we go beyond a text aimed at securing the Olympics”. Although left-wing deputies are still reserving their final vote, the text should mainly obtain support from the right and the far right, in support of the presidential majority.
“The government is using the pretext of the Olympics for a security Trojan horse that proves us right,” RN MP Jordan Guitton is satisfied.
Other measures include the possibility of “screening” (subjecting to an administrative investigation) accredited persons at competition sites and in “fan-zones”, and the strengthening of sanctions in the event of intrusion into an enclosure.
The copy of the Senate on this point was softened in committee in the Assembly, but left-wing deputies still see it as a measure against activists, especially environmentalists. The text also provides for genetic tests in order to comply with world anti-doping standards, the creation of a large health center in the Olympic village, or even exemptions from the rules of Sunday work.
