A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #359 - BIG BROTHER 359 April 2026 (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

A Police File Out of Control ---- Police officers use facial recognition 
software installed on their service phones. The device, called "NEO," 
for "new operational equipment," is a type of smartphone issued to all 
French police officers and gendarmes. Since 2022, in addition to the 
usual smartphone functions, such as the automated reading of ID cards 
and license plates, the NEO provides access to a facial recognition 
tool. This technology is directly connected to a massive police 
database: the TAJ. Launched in 2014, the TAJ, for "processing of 
criminal records," contains approximately 17 million records on 
individuals implicated in investigations, as well as 48 million victims. 
Each record includes the individual's name, date of birth, address, 
occupation, telephone number, and even sensitive personal information 
such as political or religious affiliation. And sometimes, their 
photo-the TAJ (Automated Criminal Records System) contains up to 9 
million frontal portraits, according to a document from the General 
Secretariat of the Ministry of the Interior obtained by Dis-close. This 
is completely illegal: consulting the TAJ and using facial recognition 
during an identity check are prohibited in France. This is revealed in a 
Ministry of the Interior instruction concerning the "consultation of the 
TAJ application," dated February 2022, which Dis-close obtained.
The Code of Criminal Procedure strictly limits access to this police 
file to agents "individually designated and specifically authorized" to 
access it. This access is restricted to the context of a criminal 
investigation, an offense, or a misdemeanor. The TAJ cannot be consulted 
during "real-time" checks. The use of the TAJ, combined with facial 
recognition, has more than doubled in five years. From 375,000 
consultations in 2019, it rose to nearly 1 million in 2024. This 
corresponds to 2,500 consultations per day, according to a document from 
the General Secretariat of the Ministry of the Interior, without 
specifying the number of illegal uses related to judicial or 
administrative investigations.

"When police officers can photograph whomever they want to find out who 
is who, it's a reversal of the rule of law. We're sliding into a police 
state or a mass surveillance state," warns Noémie Levain, a lawyer at La 
Quadrature du Net.

Source: disclose.ngo/fr

Before the 2026 municipal elections, the debate on video surveillance 
has mobilized candidates and professionals in the sector.
In Boitron (Orne), a town of 349 inhabitants, the outgoing municipal 
team is running for re-election, announcing on January 18 its intention 
to install CCTV cameras near waste containers following, according to 
the local press, "repeated acts of incivility." In Saint-Nazaire 
(Loire-Atlantique), the municipal election platform of the "United for 
Saint-Nazaire" list proposes deploying 300 cameras, compared to fewer 
than 100 currently. In Dieppe (Seine-Maritime), the mayor, Nicolas 
Langlois (French Communist Party), a candidate for re-election, had the 
principle of installing more than 80 cameras adopted on December 18, 
2025, during the last municipal council session of the year. From Nièvre 
to Manche, passing through Haute-Savoie and the Southwest, similar 
projects, varying according to the size of the municipalities involved, 
are springing up.

"No municipality wants to be caught out on this issue, and incumbent 
candidates are quick to point out that they have already secured votes 
for the installation or renewal of existing equipment," observes Patrick 
Haas, editor-in-chief of En toute sécurité, which publishes an annual 
benchmark economic atlas on the security market. Yet, according to this 
expert, "the majority of investments have already been made since 2024." 
This should even lead to a "market slowdown" in 2026, due to the 
sustained volume of orders placed over the past two years. Nothing, 
however, that would threaten the sector's robust health, which recorded 
a turnover of approximately EUR2.3 billion in 2025, representing a 6% 
increase compared to 2024. "There's no major acceleration planned before 
the elections," confirms Dominique Legrand, president and founder of the 
National Association for Video Protection (AN2V), the sector's control 
center with 160 member companies, 8,000 public and private clients - 
and, according to the association La Quadrature du Net, the spearhead of 
lobbying efforts by professionals targeting elected officials. 
Nevertheless, AN2V closely monitors ongoing projects and provides 
elected officials, not just during election periods, with training 
sessions and a comprehensive overview of the sector's activity.
Those of us who criticize "techno-security" solutions recently had 
reason to rejoice. On January 30, the Council of State dashed the hopes 
of proponents of developing algorithmic video surveillance by ruling 
that cameras equipped with this technology, placed at the entrance of 
certain schools in Nice, were not authorized "under current law."

Source: lemonde.fr

Buildings of the future administrative detention center (CRAS) in 
Mérignac (33) vandalized
Fencing cut, video surveillance system destroyed, windows shattered, 
electrical cables ripped out, water pipes damaged, tiles broken, walls 
defaced, expanding foam poured into drains, etc. The perpetrator(s) who 
vandalized the buildings of the future administrative detention center 
(CRA) in Mérignac devastated a large part of the site. According to 
initial findings on Monday morning, January 19, almost all of the 
bulletproof glass panels and the building's tiling were cracked. Several 
electrical conduits were also severed, the prosecutor's office detailed. 
The damage is estimated at several hundred thousand euros.
This detention center is planned to have 140 places, including 14 
reserved for women, on a 2.4-hectare site. As early as 2023, citizen 
groups had expressed their disapproval, citing environmental concerns. 
This future detention center was supposed to be operational by the first 
quarter of 2026, which is unlikely despite statements from the Gironde 
Prefecture.

Sources: France-info, anonymous

Another corrupt cop at large
Ousmane is 17 years old. A year ago, while sitting peacefully at the 
foot of a building, he had the misfortune of crossing paths with a 
police patrol. One of the officers immediately yelled at him, "Hey, 
baboon!" "Hey monkey!" he shouted, running towards him. In an outburst 
of gratuitous violence, Ousmane was then subjected to a torrent of 
insults from the same officer, as well as two punches to the face, 
before being handcuffed. The unbearable scene lasted 16 long minutes.

In the arrest report, the police officer wrote that the teenager had 
tried to flee several times and even went so far as to file a complaint 
for "violence and resisting arrest against a person in authority." A 
classic! But by a stroke of luck, the officer's body camera had 
activated without him noticing! In court, the footage revealed a very 
different version of events from the officer's lies, where the 
teenager's only fault was apparently not having the right skin color, or 
not living in the right neighborhood. Perjury by a sworn officer is 
theoretically a very serious offense, punishable by the Assize Court. 
But in this case, it will not be so; the corrupt officer is ultimately 
sentenced to only eight months' suspended imprisonment and a two-year 
ban from practicing law enforcement. He will return to his job with the 
police force and will be able to wear the uniform in public again. It 
should be noted that only the radio station France Inter, in its legal 
affairs segment, will mention the case.

Sources: radiofrance.fr and Contre-Attaque

In the Nahel Merzouk case, the notion of "murder" disappears!

Nearly three years after the death of Nahel, killed at point-blank range 
by a police officer on June 27, 2023, in Nanterre, the Versailles Court 
of Appeal decided on Thursday, March 5, to hold a trial against the 
defendant for "violence resulting in death without intent to kill," and 
not for murder, as recommended by the investigating judges. The Court of 
Appeal "did not follow the investigating judges' findings regarding 
intent to kill, finding that it had not been established that Florian M. 
was motivated, at the time of the shooting, by the intention to take the 
driver's life," the Versailles Court of Appeal explained in its 
statement. The officer had initially been sent to trial before the 
Assize Court for murder, but he appealed this decision. Filmed and 
widely shared on social media, the death of the 17-year-old, shot by 
Florian M. during a traffic stop, sparked several nights of rioting 
across France. For Nahel's family, this judicial decision is scandalous 
and shameful. For Florian M.'s lawyer, L.F. Liénard, the justice system 
has not had the courage, for the time being (!), to dismiss the case 
because his client was simply following the law!

According to sources close to the case cited by Agence France-Presse, 
the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) had recommended 
that Florian M., the officer who fired the shot, be referred to a 
disciplinary board. He is now back at work within the national police 
force. The second officer present during the stop, who was initially 
considered an assisted witness for complicity in murder, was cleared of 
all charges, a decision upheld by the Versailles Court of Appeal.
We have just learned that the Versailles public prosecutor's office 
announced on Monday, March 16, that it has filed an appeal with the 
Court of Cassation against the reclassification of the charges against 
the police officer, who was initially prosecuted for murder. To be 
continued!

Sources: Le Monde and Mediapart.fr

Future overhaul of the national police's incident log software?!
Almost a year after the publication of a study on "the management of 
'undesirables' by the police in the Paris region," supported by the 
Defender of Rights, the Minister of the Interior promised in 
mid-February to remove the term "undesirables" from the national 
police's incident log software.

This term successively referred to "foreign Jews" and Roma in the 1930s, 
then to "Muslim French citizens from Algeria" in the 1960s. The 
undesirable is "the one who is expelled or turned back," writes 
political scientist Emmanuel Blanchard in an article devoted to this 
"category of public action."

Today, the "disruptive/undesirable" section of the software in question 
applies to categories of people whom law enforcement tends to remove 
from public spaces because they engage in behaviors considered 
disruptive, without necessarily constituting criminal offenses: Roma, 
homeless people, migrants, drug addicts, people with mental health 
issues, as well as groups of young people...
In recent months, the French Ombudsman, Claire Hédon, has repeatedly 
requested that the word "undesirable" be removed "from all software or 
documents of the national police." The Minister of the Interior, Laurent 
Nunez, has pledged to do so.

But this is more than a symbolic victory, as the Minister of the 
Interior still refuses to acknowledge the discriminatory identity checks 
and their continuation, nor the repeated fines issued to certain young 
men of color when they are in public spaces. Yet, in May 2025, a police 
officer from Suresnes was sentenced by the Hauts-de-Seine Criminal Court 
to eighteen months' imprisonment, suspended, and a permanent ban from 
practicing law enforcement, with immediate effect, for issuing 
fictitious tickets to a 16-year-old boy in 2021. During the trial, the 
victim's lawyer pointed out that his client had repeatedly been labeled 
as an "undesirable" in the incident log software used by the police 
station. This term was brought to the public's attention in the 
mid-2010s, during another legal case initiated by young people from the 
12th arrondissement of Paris, who were subjected to repeated and violent 
police checks. The phenomenon of discriminatory identity checks, 
supported by numerous scientific studies over the past forty years, 
regularly gives rise to new publications. However, these publications 
encounter strong denial and seem to have no impact on public policy. The 
idea of ​​"traceability" for these checks, once considered by French 
authorities in the form of a receipt given to those stopped, has never 
been implemented.

Source: Mediapart.fr

French prisons continue to overflow. Almost every month, the record for 
overcrowding is broken. As of February 1st, there were 86,645 inmates. 
The prison occupancy rate stands at 136.9%. This overcrowding forces 
6,596 prisoners to sleep on mattresses on the floor, compared to 4,490 a 
year ago.
Over the past year, 5,046 more inmates have been admitted to prisons, 
despite an additional 1,643 places. This overcrowding primarily affects 
remand prisons (167%), where detainees awaiting trial, and therefore 
presumed innocent, are held, as well as those sentenced to short terms. 
In France, prison overcrowding exceeds 200% in 25 French penitentiary 
facilities.

Source: Lemonde.fr

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4692
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