It was by discovering an article from France Bleu Orléans on the city of Orleans project to deploy abnormal sound detectors coupled with some of its video surveillance cameras, that the Technopolice collective decided to organize the response by organizing a first meeting, on Friday December 3, in Orléans. This collective, created by the association “La Quadrature du net”, which fights against infringements of rights and freedoms on the Internet, is worried about this kind of technology which marks an additional step in the development of citizen surveillance.
These abnormal sound detectors were the subject of a draft agreement between the city of Orleans and the start-up Sensivic, based at Lab’O, the digital incubator of Orléans. This company specializing in the deployment of new technologies and in particular artificial intelligence in favor of security, offers through this agreement and for the purpose of experimentation, to equip three or four of the town’s 220 video surveillance cameras, sound sensors, a system called “sound-scanner”. Presented in the form of a deliberation to the municipal council in October 2021, this technology would be, according to the deputy in charge of security Florent Montillot, “a decision aid for the agents”.
In 2019, the Cnil warned the city of Saint-Etienne which had the same project
“Alouette”, member of this collective, present at the meeting of December 3, points above all “the possible illegality” of the device. With reference to a warning issued in 2019 by the CNIL, the Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés, to the city of Saint-Etienne, which wanted to deploy sound sensors on its territory. “The CNIL recalled that sound and voice are personal data” explains Alouette. “As such, their use is particularly supervised, and people must give their consent”. The Orleans device therefore risks being also targeted by such a warning, according to the group.
“Not at all” answers Florent Montillot. “We have made sure to only recover metadata, that is to say the frequencies emitted by sounds that will be considered suspect, to meet the recommendations of the CNIL”. The chosen one ensures that there will be no recording of voices, nor even noise. Over time, we do not know precisely over what duration, the detected sounds will be classified by an algorithm, which will determine their suspicious character and will allow them to be associated, in the long term, with specific alerts.
The question of the consent of the people of Orleans
Beyond the question of legality, this is precisely what worries the Technopolice collective : “we develop these technologies by using the inhabitants of Orleans as guinea pigs, in a way” Alouette alert, the individual freedoms activist. “And we do not ask their opinion, because we have little control over it. And this for the benefit of a very lucrative market and of which we do not know what the finality is. Sensivic, for example, has a market with the Air Force”.
The complete opinion of the Cnil and the concerns of the Technopolice collective can be found on the Quadrature du Net site.