Civil liberty groups question facial recognition France tech rollout
France is a world leader in surveillance technology and it is already widely deployed by security forces across the country
10 May 2021
The government wanted to use real-time facial recognition tech during the gilets jaunes protest, one civil liberties group has saidBy Rory Mulholland
MPs may have blocked some of the government’s more extreme attempts to widen police use of facial recognition but surveillance technology is already widely deployed by security forces in France.
Its critics say its use is likely to be expanded.
France is a world leader in the technology, and French biometrics firm Idemia recently beat nearly 300 contenders to come first in a US government agency’s competition for the best algorithm to identify photos of individuals.