By a final vote in the Senate, Parliament definitively adopted on Wednesday April 12 the text prepared by the government for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
The vote on the compromise recorded in the joint joint committee was won by 252 votes “for” and 27 “against” (communists and ecologists). The Socialists abstained. The National Assembly had largely approved the text on Tuesday. But left-wing deputies have already warned that they would seize the Constitutional Council.
This text ” integrates all the measures essential for the smooth running of Games (…), while ensuring full respect for the rights and freedoms of our fellow citizens “, underlined the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra. The Senate ” has multiplied the safeguards, controls, guarantees “, noted the rapporteur of the text, the senator Les Républicains Agnès Canayer.
Controversial cameras
Algorithmic video surveillance, the text’s flagship measure, nevertheless raises concerns. The goal: for algorithms to feed on images from cameras and drones to more quickly identify potentially dangerous “events”, such as the start of a crowd movement or the abandonment of luggage, and report them to the teams. security who scrutinize the gatherings behind their screens. But the list of “events” to be detected will be fixed later, which does not reassure opponents of the text.
The experiment, which could begin as soon as the promulgation and relate to the next Rugby World Cup (September 8-October 28), should theoretically end on March 31, 2025. The images, which can be analyzed using company algorithms private, may be kept for a maximum period of 12 months. The executive and the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, invoke the need to secure the millions of visitors and insist on the safeguards and the absence of facial recognition.
But left-wing elected officials, associations such as Amnesty and La Quadrature du net or the Conseil national des barreaux are against it. Some believe that the Olympic Games (July 26-August 11) and Paralympic Games (August 28-September 8) will only serve as a showcase for perpetuating these “augmented cameras”, and generalizing their use for the surveillance of the entire population.
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“Screenings”
Other measures of the bill are already supposed to continue after the Games, such as the extension of the field of “screening”, the conduct of administrative investigations on people. Participants and accredited persons at competition sites and fan zones may be targeted, but not fans.
The government’s plan provides for the creation of two offences: one punishing illegal entry, in a situation of recidivism, into a sports arena. The other repressing the fact of entering the area or the field of competition. Environmentalists are particularly concerned that the measure will be used against climate activists. A mandatory stadium ban penalty for serious security breaches would also be created.
More consensual measure: the text provides for the creation of a health center in the Olympic village in Saint-Denis, although the opposition regrets that the structure does not survive the Olympics, in a department which lacks caregivers. It will also reinforce the anti-doping arsenal of the authorities, with in particular tests intended to detect forms of genetic doping. Finally, it provides for derogations from the rules of Sunday rest, which will run from June 15 to September 30, despite the opposition of the parliamentary left, and support systems for the transport of spectators with disabilities.
(With AFP)