La France insoumise announces taking legal action over the use of facial recognition in the police

LFI deputies are also calling for a parliamentary commission of inquiry, after an article published by the investigative site Disclose according to which the Ministry of the Interior had used this controversial technology.

The reactions follow one another in the wake of the revelations of the media Disclose. After the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, it is the turn of the parliamentary group La France insoumise (LFI) to speak out on the use of facial recognition by the police, announcing, Tuesday, November 21, that it is “in the process of taking legal action”. The deputies are also calling for a parliamentary commission of inquiry, after the article published by the investigative site on November 14, according to which the police use video surveillance software published by the Israeli company BriefCam, one of whose functionalities allows facial recognition .

The fate of this request for a parliamentary commission of inquiry is however uncertain, since the LFI group has already used its “drawing right” annual, which allows him to obtain de facto this type of commission in the Assembly. “It’s a huge scandal”however insisted LFI deputy Aurélien Saintoul, during his group’s press briefing in the Assembly, relayed on X. He stressed that “the use of this facial recognition and algorithmic surveillance software contravenes the law, whether the GDPR (general data protection regulation), the Data Protection Act and, more recently, the Olympic Games law“.

A control procedure already in progress

For the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, “I remind you that in our hemicycle, we debated the question of algorithmic video surveillance and that Parliament had explicitly decided to prevent the use of facial recognition”, insisted the deputy for Hauts-de-Seine. On France 5, Tuesday, the Minister of the Interior defended himself: “We use BriefCam like other software, but under the authority of a magistrate”arguing that“has [sa] knowledge, we do not use facial recognition”.

The National Commission for Informatics and Liberties (Cnil), an independent authority guardian of the private lives of the French, announced on November 15 the launch of a “control procedure” targeting the Ministry of the Interior, after the publication of the Disclose investigation.