Biggest sporting event or greatest-ever violation of right to privacy?

In a recent bill passing, controversies have emerged regarding France's implementation of IA powered surveillance during the games in 2024. Technologies of mass surveillance violate the rights to privacy and can lead to violations of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly. “AI-driven mass surveillance is a dangerous political project which could lead to broad violations of human rights.-Agnès Callamard, Secretary General, Amnesty International.” Any public actions will be collected into a dragnet of surveillance infrastructure which undermine civic freedoms. According to French lawmakers, this step would be “experimental” with the purpose of ensuring safety and security during the games. Nevertheless, this may result in a permanent expansion of police power by broadening the government’s arsenal of police equipment.

The universality of international human rights law clearly applies to the Olympics. games. This implementation directly threatens the individuals’ rights to freedom of assembly and association, privacy and non-discrimination.

Those who enter the premises of the games will be constantly tracked and monitored, thus IA algorithms will have the power to collect data from all people and allow officials to detect “suspicious” or “abnormal” activity in the crowds. But what counts as “normal” behavior and who sets the parameters for the broad definitions? The public is scared that officials will use nuanced guidelines to target and discriminate against specific communities. Many believe that AI technologies may increase racist policing and threaten the right to protest (freedom of speech) in the long run.

In the past few months the EU has worked relentlessly to regulate and limit the power of Artificial Intelligence and protect the rights of the people (AI ACTI ). France’s government is challenging those efforts by legalizing IA powered surveillance and potentially allowing the state to perform large-scale violations of privacy, protest, assembly and expression.

Because of France's Influential position , it has the power of setting a disturbing precedent which contradicts the efforts of the EU which are focused on concretizing the rights of the IA ACT. It is now up to the European Parliament to present a ban on any IA surveillance with the capabilities of facial recognition and categorization in public areas.

Legal Background

The bill regarding IA surveillance implementation was approved by the Senate on January 31

On March 23, the French National Assembly adopted Article 7 allowing AI powered video surveillance