The French Parliament has definitively adopted a law on the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024 that contemplates the use, initially on an experimental basis, of surveillance cameras fed with theoretical algorithms to quickly detect risk situations.
The Ministry of Sports defended, in a statement published on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, shortly after that parliamentary approval, this controversial device, insisting that it will be carried out under “strictly regulated conditions of use and in a limited experimental framework until the 31st of March 2025”.
In addition, at the end of 2024, with the experience of its use in the Olympic and Paralympic Games during the summer of that year, an evaluation will be made. The objective, according to the Department of Sports, is to “detect serious risks more quickly with image processing with algorithms.”
It is also about “making fluid control at the entrances in the competition and celebration centers and better coordinating the teams mobilized for transport security.” The idea is that the algorithms that are incorporated into the programs for the use of surveillance cameras, thanks to the experiences of past episodes, allow the forces of order to be warned as quickly as possible of phenomena such as movements of crowds or abandoned luggage.
The Government, given the signs of concern expressed by parliamentarians from the left-wing opposition, has insisted in its defense that facial recognition programs will not be used, as it is done widely in China to control the population.
The experimentation could begin once the text of the law is promulgated, for example during the Rugby World Cup that France is organizing this year in autumn.
The Ministry of Sports stressed that the law will also make it possible to “prevent and punish more” violence and acts of hooliganism at sporting events, with “a more systematic recourse” to stadium bans issued by the courts and an increase in Sanctions for those who break into a competition area.
Some protocols that take on a particular resonance when remembering the fiasco of the organization of the Champions League final at the end of May of last year, which Real Madrid and Liverpool played at the Stade de France, on the northern outskirts of Paris.
A fiasco marked by the accusations of fraud launched at first by the French authorities, and directed in particular against the English fans, to explain the chaos around the stadium and the actions of the forces of order against the fans, many of whom who were actually victims of large-scale robberies and violence by local criminals.
