The development of surveillance technologies redefines the security approach under the influence of economic issues. Wherever it settles, this surveillance boosted to new technologies raises the question of liberticide drifts.
Object of concern as much as security fantasy, the use of new technologies for police control is no longer a distant possibility or only authoritarian regimes. Indeed, video surveillance having been widespread in public space in countries deemed democratic, it is technologies of algorithmic analysis that gain ground, especially in France where they were officially made legal and integrated into the security apparatus during the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024. As for facial recognition, it was not prohibited by European legislation onIA Recently adopted, which spares many exceptions according to the threats identified for security and order.
The deployment of innovative technologies and largely using artificial intelligence, therefore constitutes both a potential market, and a threat to public freedoms. The title Technopolice Chosen by Félix Tréguer translates the wish to take these two dimensions into account, in a test which appears as the fruit of a course at the crossroads between research and activism.
An ideal of permanent control
Already the author of a Internet counter-history (Fayard, 2019, Rééd. Agone, 2023), Félix Tréguer extends his research by his participation in the association La Quadrature du Net. This is the militant relay, for the past fifteen years, issues relating to the protection of personal data and freedoms on the Internet. Nourished by this experience, the reflection presented in Technopolice Leaves room for personal account while enlightening it with theoretical reflections. The result navigates between journalistic survey and in -depth analysis of discourse and framing struggles on police technologies.
Retracing the formation of the concept of “ technopolice “, The author recalls his highlighting almost simultaneous, not only in a critical mode by an initiative bringing together around thirty associations, but also in a much more programmatic way, as title of” Technical-operational days of domestic security »Organized by the French Interior Ministry. Bringing together ministerial services and representatives of large private groups as well as start-ups, these events attest that “ facial recognition is already largely integrated into police practices “(P. 27) – An observation which has recently been shown to be also accompanied by very concrete and totally illegal uses.
As summarizes by a note from a research center of the national gendarmerie cited by the author, and devoted to “ The issue of acceptability “Facial recognition, the advantage of it would be to set up a” identity check (which) would be permanent And general »(P. 32), sort of updating of the Foucaldian panoptic applying to all and everywhere until abolishing any possibility of anonymity:” Discovered to circulate to teach an infalcable identity card, readable at any time (P. 36).
“” Safe City ” And “ datapolice »»
The author is also interested in the observed inflation of techno-security discourse, which results in particular from projects associating communities (such as cities in Nice, Dijon, Marseille, etc.) and industrial groups. These projects, under the term “ Safe City », Add the safe dimension to the concept of city» intelligent »And connected (Smart City). However, these constructions participate in a technocratic project aimed at “ shelter the neoliberal capitalism of social and ecological crises which he continues to proliferate (P. 64). For this reason, Safe City “ Interprets as a power »: The subject thus effectively spins the Foucauldian reference, certainly expected, at Monitor and punish (1975), where the philosopher described the modern passage of a punitive society in “ panoptism »Ensuring individual discipline by assurance of permanent surveillance.
In this context, the observation made resembles an impossible resistance in the face of projects initiating too many actors, with the support of the State, and bringing local political leaders, even when they have spoken against the development of video surveillance, finally integrate the innovative means of the “ Safe City “In a real” continuum between urban and police management (P. 91). However, this is only the last stage of a long process of security reframing of social problems, which the author shows how he has embarked on the political decision since the 1990s, in particular, in France, within the Socialist Party. In addition to the transformation of resistance and popular expressions of anger or revolt into behavioral problems subject to repression, this evolution particularly affects the “ unwanted “, Following the example of a young Roma woman arrested for display flight and affected by an expulsion decree after a facial comparison software had identified it from” a similarity of 69 % To a person who does not resemble him, but touched by an obligation to leave the territory.
The subject does not fail to demonstrate, moreover, how the logic of rationalization of police work by technology also impose on agents and, without preventing abuses due to a situation always asymmetrical with regard to users, places their actions and behaviors under the pressure of new obligations aimed at abolishing files, and a policy of figure, all largely transforming police work, and participating in dehumanisation of the public relationship (p. 101-140).
Advance the security cause
The disturbing list of violations of rights, biases and abuses in the use of new police technologies is supplemented, within the survey, by the demonstration of the mobilization of private interests and political entrepreneurs in a real framing struggle. The challenge, for these actors, is to promote a technophile vision, identifying the development of security technologies as an economic opportunity. In this vast market, national groups should be supported in the face of competition from foreign, Chinese or Israeli companies in particular. Beyond, in fact, the belief put forward by these actors in the fact that “ Biometrics are inevitable “(P. 29), or that” Police added value (facial recognition) is no doubt “(P. 32), the association of public and private actors making up a” field interstitial »At blurred borders (p. 145), and within common structures seems to be aimed at aligning public means (and public procurement) on industrial purposes.
This goes, in particular, through a “ HOLD UP »(P. 37-47) On many public funding funds, both in the form of European direct subsidies (Horizon Europe, Feder) and national (Bpifrance) than through tax niches (research tax credit in France). But we also find, at the service of this industrial strategy identifying in the “ technopolice Above all, an economic opportunity, pressures leading to softening projects for the prohibition of facial recognition in European legislation (p. 165-182) and in particular, the development of exceptions which are no longer justified by the urgent necessities of public order, but also by support for innovation. These “ sandboxes »Derogatory of personal data laws, under the pretext of technological experimentation, extend a strategy of” small steps Which, for several decades, has seen the examples of exceptional devices then integrated into common law and used for repressive purposes much less isolated than initially promised. Developments allowing the implementation of algorithmic video surveillance in public space during Joy From Paris in 2024 constituted a case of school, the French government having already announced its wish to make it a permanent tool.
Likewise, the ambiguous role of Cnilunderlined on several occasions by the author, highlights his transformation of a body of control and supervision of practices to a tool of compliance (“ compliance »), Accompanying private actors in a process of bringing their actions into compliance, more than it would restrict them according to a repressive logic. Anne Bellon, to whom Félix Tréguer refers, thus noted how the evolution of the legislation on personal data, in particular under the influence of obligations on the processing of personal data created by the GDPR European, “ led to the appearance of a new market in compliance », And how Cnil Takes it fully, what MP Philippe Latombe, fervent support for video surveillance, summarizes for his part, claiming that “ there Cnil opened his chakras “And, now,” integrates social and technological and economic realities (P. 163).
A totalitarian aim ?
In this, moreover, the technopolizing issue particularly illustrates the apparent divestment, by the State, of its role as the guarantor of public rights and freedoms, in a time of reconfiguration of sovereign balances. It can also appear somewhat paradoxical to proclaim in conclusion of this essay that “ The Technopolice tends to be made totalitarian (P. 183). Because if the rereading of the frontispiece of Abraham Bosse for the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes (1651) from the angle of police surveillance is worthy of interest (p. 67-68), the developments making quite directly “ derive The statement of state reason (p. 63-73) do not explain this apparent contradiction between weakening of state sovereignty and extension of police surveillance means.
Undoubtedly, for that, one might deepen the essential reference to Carl Schmitt (p. 174), and replace it in the long evolution of exceptional policies, to understand the advent of a new paradigm, opposing a total state “ quantitative “Extending his areas of intervention to the social sphere, and promoting a state” total within the meaning of quality and energy », Centered on the maintenance of order at the service of private interests and a« Authoritarian liberalism ».
Because, as Félix Tréguer points out (p. 173), these softenings and the rhetoric of the “ Nation start-up “Illustrate the” Trade in legal sovereignty “Reported by Benjamin Lemoine and Antoine Vauchez. Thus, the power to regulate, to say the law, is the subject of a new sharing, which does not result from the simple injunction of private actors, but from a “ government counter-culture »Transforming the state into an actor of its own deregulation, and of its neoliberal moult into a multiplicity of public authorities to the smaller perimeter. Also the development of surveillance technologies can be perceived as one of the revealing elements of a more general problem, that of a “ Authoritarian spiral And anti -democratic, the threat of which appears increased by the fact that it has the unprecedented control possibilities offered by the technopolice.