Road. Sidewalks. Public building. Re-bitumen. Place. The wall of screens of the municipal police station of Massy, in Essonne, randomly displays each plan of the city squared by cameras. Jeremy, the teleoperator on duty, scrutinizes these “aquarium” images impassively while finishing his bag of crisps. The clock approaches 5 p.m. this Friday. A high point of the day is approaching. The Massicois are getting ready to leave school, work or come back; the city has two RER stations and a TGV station. A small part of the camera park narrows in the passage areas. Jeremy’s attention too… Without worrying about what he might miss elsewhere. For more than two years, Massy has teamed up with artificial intelligence (AI).
Fifteen licenses of software provided by the French start-up XXII takes advantage of the large fleet of cameras in the town – 271, about one for 178 inhabitants – a legacy of the Sarkozy era. Régis Lebeaupin, the municipal police officer in charge of the tool, boasts of its many use cases: detection of fires, abandoned luggage, contraflow traffic, inconvenient parking… Everything can be modified as desired. Demonstration. One of the largest boulevards in the city is adjacent to a school. A red light moderates traffic. An illegal crossing at this time could have dramatic consequences. In two clicks, the policeman tells the platform the direction of traffic and circles the red light. It does not need more than three additional seconds to then tick the vehicles to identify – bicycles, cars, motorcycles (the AI can also distinguish them separately) – which would be at fault. All that remains is to set a duration for this intervention. One hour, two hours. Or permanently. That’s it, the AI is on the way.
It silently compiles faulty passages and can, if necessary, send alerts by sound or SMS (its only “live” use). It is then up to the police to decide whether they should intervene or, as a last resort, video-verbalize. “We especially do not want to systematize this purpose”, assures Guillaume Dürr, director of cabinet of the mayor Nicolas Samsoen (UDI). It all depends on the level of danger or embarrassment. At the same time, a camera captures a man leaning quietly against his car parked along a yellow line at the entrance to a park. A flagrant offense of prohibited parking. “The AI could very well report it to me, assures Régis Lebeaupin. But there is no one in the park. ‘intervene there. That’s not the case here.’ Whatever the case, “the AI never verbalizes, it cannot make a decision”, we are assured. Originally, it was even used more for counts, and not for traffic offenses or safety. Gauging the crowd, indiscriminately, regardless of who is who. Evaluate the passages of cars, bicycles, in order to justify new developments (cycle paths, speed bumps) with precise data. “Just with that, the investment of 15,000 euros per year is profitable,” says the mayor’s office.
“What did you expect, colored rectangles on individuals?” laughs Régis Lebeaupin. Our interlocutor refers to the “bounding-box” that we often come across in spy films. In a large square – preferably crowded – a camera isolates a man, a woman or a child and surrounds him with a purple, yellow or red rectangle. Some directors zealous add lots of little anxiety-provoking figures. We understand that the device will follow him everywhere, right to his doorstep. “Many imagine that artificial intelligence materializes like this, but it’s a fantasy” , assures the police officer. “It’s not Orwell’s 1984 here.” The solution is compatible with the RGPD, the European personal data regulation, and it is also “CNIL-friendly“, specifies Régis Lebeaupin. In short, almost a friend?
© / CNIL
Use cases that can be confusing
The reality, however, is a tad more nuanced. “There is a legal vacuum,” admitted Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin last fall about “augmented” video, also called “algorithmic” or “automated”. Dozens of municipalities, including Suresnes, Aulnay-sous-Bois, Roubaix and Massy, are currently benefiting from this blind spot. The French policeman of personal data is, meanwhile, not as friendly only that. “Augmented” video can constitute an invisible and “contactless” technology for people. If citizens can observe and, in a certain way, apprehend the installation of different video cameras in their daily lives, they do not have way to be aware that they can also analyze them, nor in what way and on what criteria this analysis works […] The analysis of the legality of the algorithmic processing on which the “augmented” video is based must therefore be carried out on a case-by-case basis”, thus tempers the CNIL in his official position on the subject, dated summer 2022.
Article 7 of olympics bill, currently being debated in the National Assembly, has also awakened opposition to this technology. The text wishes to authorize the State to try out AI video surveillance for security purposes. “The crowd management tool, for example, will be very useful during the opening ceremony on the banks of the Seine”, wants to believe the deputy of the 1st district of Vendée, Philippe Latombe, author of a mission of information on the subject and architect of this article. Elected officials, mostly on the left, as well as associations, Squaring the Net in the lead, ask for their outright withdrawal of the article. These actors denounce a new stage in the surveillance of individuals. Use cases can indeed be confusing. At the urban supervision center (CSU) in Massy, Régis Lebeaupin shows us how to detect a potential illegal illegal dump. A detection zone is given to the AI which scrupulously notes any stoppage of 20 to 40 seconds and beyond, in a register. Or when, in a car park, the police officer delimits an area where recurring thefts take place, and offers the AI to record each human passage that would take place there. In both cases, the technology draws the outlines of “suspicious behavior”.
For its opponents, Article 7 is finally a nice gift to a young industry. Wintics, Neuroo or Briefcam are competitors of XXII in a booming market (XXII has just raised 22 million euros), as is artificial intelligence. Philippe Latombe returns the argument: we must stop the hypocrisy by opening the door to this software “already used in Europe”, he explains. Sometimes even with “much more intrusive” practices. Understand: who uses biometrics (the recognition of people via physical characteristics) or outright facial recognition. The lack of a legal framework should therefore encourage legislation as it is trying to do. The amenities are already there, after all. Why not enjoy it ? “75% of the initial investment in the cameras is often lost because no one is looking at the screens”, recalls François Mattens, in the public affairs of XXII. Unstoppable.
As sugar calls sugar, technology often calls for more technology. Tomorrow, in Massy, we could entrust the management of traffic lights to the AI. Or the route of the garbage collectors “depending on the filling of the bins”, indicates François Mattens. Its software can do that. The old dream of the Smart City at your fingertips. Régis Lebeaupin remains marked by two events observed through his cameras. An epileptic fit and a death. Can artificial intelligence also come to the aid of victims and sound the alarm as quickly as possible by identifying the danger? Maybe, he thinks. In the immediate future, Massy has no plans to obtain new licenses for its artificial intelligence software. But it will install, this year, 66 new cameras more on its territory.