French left-leaning lawmakers from the Greens and France Unbowed have officially challenged the AI-powered surveillance system for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics before the country’s top constitutional court, they announced recently.
“This bill violates several principles of constitutional value since it disregards the right to privacy, the principle of necessity and individualization of penalties … or the principle of safeguarding human dignity,” they wrote, mentioning algorithmic video surveillance, among other issues.
The French parliament earlier this month adopted a controversial bill that allows the experimentation of large-scale, real-time camera systems supported by algorithms to spot suspicious behaviour — including unsupervised luggage and crowd movements like stampedes — for the Olympics next year. The system would be in place until March 2025
Presented by the government, the legislation has met criticism and opposition from digital rights NGOs in France and abroad.
AI-powered video surveillance “infringes on the fundamental freedoms of movement, demonstration and opinion … without demonstrating either the necessity of such a system or its proportionality in the absence of effective guarantees for the persons concerned,” according to members of parliament from the Greens and France Unbowed. They also argue the experimentation lasts too long, as it will end about seven months after the Olympics actually wrap up, and risks being discriminatory because of potential algorithmic biases.
