La Quadrature du Net and Ligue des droits de l’homme · Nos. 440442 and 440445
Conseil d’État, urgent applications judges · 18 May 2020
Police used drones over Paris to check compliance with public-health restrictions. Officials said they wanted a general view of crowds. Two associations challenged the scheme. Its stated purpose left a practical question unanswered. Could the camera and transmission system identify an individual?
The immediate remedy
The Conseil d’État found that the equipment could identify people and lacked technical safeguards making identification impossible. That capacity brought the operation within personal-data rules even though officers were instructed to avoid identifying individuals. The judges ordered the state to stop this surveillance on notification of the order. It could resume under a suitable regulatory framework adopted after consultation with the data protection authority, or with technical measures that made identification impossible.
What to establish in a surveillance case
Identify the operator, the place, what the camera captures and where the feed goes. A written promise about how officers normally use a camera answers a different question from whether its design prevents identification. This was an urgent decision about one Paris scheme in 2020. A later deployment must be examined under its own authorisation and safeguards.
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