2023-09-30 08:06:00
In 2021, La Quadrature du Net attacked an algorithmic audio surveillance device deployed in Orléans as part of an agreement with the surveillance company Sensivic. This week, the CNIL has just proven us right by highlighting the illegality of this technopolice system.
In 2021, the city of Orléans concluded a contract with a local startup, Sensivic, to experiment with a new form of police surveillance of public spaces: algorithmic audio surveillance (ASA). Like what had been attempted Saint Etienne, the project consisted of deploying “ abnormal sound detectors » (i.e. “snitches”) on surveillance cameras.
The ASA is one of the components of the Technopolice which is asserting itself on French territory, alongside algorithmic video surveillance (VSA), drones and facial recognition. It is essential to slow it down and fight it wherever it spreads. This is the reason why we attacked the agreement between Orléans and Sensivic, both before the administrative courts and before the CNIL. It is today that the CNIL, after more than two years of investigation, has just proven us right.
The CNIL comes here to recall what it had already said in Saint-Étienne. Indeed, in 2019, with the help of the company Serenicity, Saint-Étienne had considered a similar sound monitoring project: the CNIL had already considered at the time thatit is illegal to capture sounds in public spaces to improve video surveillance.
The Orléans project that we attacked also provided for an automated analysis of all sounds in public spaces with the aim of helping the cameras detect certain suspicious behaviors. Despite everything that could baratiner Sensivic in the context of our litigation, the CNIL points out the law: this microphone device, coupled with video surveillance, is illegal because existing law does not in any way allow such surveillance.
After Saint-Étienne, such a decision in Orléans at least helps to clarify things and put a brake, however small, on the surveillance industry which seeks by all means to resell its mass surveillance software.
This position of the CNIL is nevertheless disappointing.
Firstly, while it was only a question of the strict application of a decision already taken in the past in Saint-Étienne, the CNIL took almost three years to examine this file and to make a decision. Three years during which the ASA was able to standardize and develop. Three years won for the Technopolice. Note that we are still awaiting the decision of the administrative court on this same file.
On the other handthe CNIL limits its reasoning to the question of coupling the ASA with video surveillance. On the contrary, it considers that, when the ASA is not coupled with video surveillance, there could be no processing of personal data. This analysis by the CNIL, although without practical consequences, remains very questionable legally. In short, it seems to leave room for the surveillance industry on the issue of automated sound analysis.
Considering that personal data is only processed when the ASA is coupled with a video surveillance device (or any person identification mechanism) is legally questionable. But this has no direct practical consequence: the objective of the ASA is to know the source of a noise, that is to say to be coupled to another device. This ” natural complement to the image in security and video surveillance systems ”, to use the words of Sensivic, is quite illegal.
This victory before the CNIL is good news. It is now the turn of administrative justice to make its decision. It is urgent today to put a definitive end to these sound surveillance projects. So to help us continue the fight, you can participate in documenting this surveillance or make a donation.
Update of October 24, 2023: we have just informed the administrative court of Orléans of the position of the CNIL (our memory is available here).
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