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La Vie des Idées
Fritz Lang, Les 1000 yeux du Docteur Mabuse (1960)
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A Panopticon for All
About: Félix Tréguer, Technopolice. La surveillance policière à l’ère de l’intelligence artificielle, Divergences
by Julien Le Mauff,<br>19 February
translated by
Susannah Dale
with the support of Cairn.info
Version française
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renseignement<br>police<br>nouvelles technologies<br>intelligence artificielle<br>surveillance
The rise of surveillance technologies is redefining the approach to security amid economic pressures. Wherever it is implemented, this surveillance, boosted by new technologies, raises the question of abuses that threaten civil liberties.
A source of both concern and security-driven fantasy, the use of new technologies for police surveillance is no longer a remote possibility or the preserve of authoritarian regimes. Indeed, with video surveillance now widely used in public spaces across countries considered democratic, algorithmic analysis technologies are gaining ground, particularly in France, where they were officially legalized and integrated into the security apparatus for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Meanwhile, facial recognition has not been banned by the recently adopted the EU AI Act, which provides for numerous exceptions based on identified threats to security and order.
The deployment of innovative technologies that make extensive use of artificial intelligence constitutes both a potential market and a threat to civil liberties. The title Technopolice chosen by Félix Tréguer reflects the desire to take both of these factors into account in an essay that is the result of a journey combining research and activism.
An ideal of permanent control
Already the author of Contre-histoire d’Internet (Fayard, 2019, reprinted by Agone, 2023), Tréguer has expanded his research as a member of the association La Quadrature du Net. For the past 15 years, this association has been an active advocate for issues related to the protection of personal data and online freedoms. Drawing on this experience, the ideas presented in Technopolice give way to personal accounts, accompanied by insightful theoretical reflections. The result is a blend of journalistic investigation and in-depth analysis of the discourse and struggles surrounding police technology.
Tracing the development of the concept of “technopolicing”, the author recalls its almost simultaneous emergence, not only in a critical manner by an initiative that brings together some 30 associations [1], but also in a much more programmatic way, as the title of a series of “technical and operational days on internal security” organized by the French Ministry of the Interior. These events, which are attended by government departments and representatives of large private companies and start-ups, show that “facial recognition is already widely integrated into police practices” (p. 27) — a finding that recent evidence has shown is accompanied by uses that are both very specific and completely illegal.
As summarized in a note issued by the Research Center of the National Gendarmerie Officers’ Academy (CREOGN) cited by the author [2], on the “issue of acceptability” of facial recognition, the advantage of this technology would be to make “identity checks permanent and universal” (p. 32), a modern version of Foucault’s panopticon that would apply to everyone everywhere, eliminating any possibility of anonymity: “moving about with your face uncovered would be like carrying a forgery-proof ID card that could be read at any time” (p. 36).
“Safe City” and “datapolice”
The author also looks at the rise in techno-security discourse, which is particularly evident in projects involving local authorities (as seen in the cities of Nice, Dijon, Marseille, etc.) and industrial groups. These projects, known as “Safe City,” add a security component to the concept of the connected “smart” city. However, such constructions are part of a technocratic project aimed at “shielding neoliberal capitalism from the social and ecological crises that it continues to generate” (p. 64). For this reason, the Safe City project “can be interpreted as a mechanism of power”: the argument thus effectively extends the Foucauldian reference — albeit expected — to Discipline and Punish (1975), in which the philosopher described the modern shift from a punitive society to “panopticism,” ensuring individual discipline through the guarantee of perpetual surveillance.
In light of this, it seems there is no way to resist projects...