France passes controversial AI surveillance bill ahead of 2024 Olympics

French legislators on Thursday passed a bill to power up police surveillance using artificial intelligence. The move comes ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympics, which will see millions descend on the French capital. The law will allow authorities to use software to identify potential threats such as dangerous crowd movements and abandoned bags. It forbids the use of biometric identification such as facial recognition, but activists argue it nevertheless opens the floodgates to potentially discriminatory and privacy-harming automated surveillance.

Noémie Levain of data rights group La Quadrature du Net calls the bill "the worst technological turning point of the last few years in France".

"We're giving the police immense powers of analysis and inspection over us and over our bodies," she said. "This law hides this under the pretence of experimentation."

Meanwhile, MP Philippe Latombe, who is in favour of the bill, argues that safeguards exist so that only companies that adhere to French and European Union regulation, and keep data on French soil, will be allowed to provide the software.

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