Police in France have conducted the nation’s first known drone surveillance of a pro soccer match, with flights of UAVs above Paris’s Parc des Princes stadium Saturday in what may be the first step toward regular deployment of publicly opposed aerial tech.
The Paris Police Prefecture announced it would be using drones above the venue 24 hours ahead of Saturday’s league opener between Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and visiting Lorient. As required by laws painstakingly recrafted in the face of vociferous opposition to surveillance from on high, law enforcement officials had to respect a multi-step authorization structure, and duly alert the public before deploying UAVs to capture video and photographic images.
Given lingering public concerns that police use of drones for crowd surveillance poses serious privacy problems, choice of Saturday’s low-risk match may have had more awareness and acclimation objectives than hard-core security motivations.
Though PSG ultras have been responsible for serious game-day violence in the past, that activity has virtually vanished following internal changes at the club – including massive ticket price hikes that have largely limited crowds to affluent families and the well-heeled. There is also no record of melees during visits by Lorient, unlike more fraught atmospheres that can surround PSG games with Marseille and Nice, for example.
Saturday’s drone flights by police both before and during the match, therefore, appears to have represented a first step (and demonstration of the innocuousness) of UAVs being flown for surveillance and security purposes – something France’s government seeks to make a regular tool in law enforcement.
But continued wariness of drone use by France’s police generated new condemnation from opponents to such aerial monitoring, in spite of the apparent educational goals behind the deployment.
“This match poses no risk whatever,” denounced @Bastinho17. “Any excuse is sufficient to violate individual liberties.”
“Mass surveillance has begun,” agreed @LilYoda, amid a Twitter thread featuring GIFs of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “Long live the monitoring of the population.”
“Police state,” laconically opined @Re-bell (Tisabelle).
Elsewhere, replies tended to range from somewhat perplexed at the precaution to guardedly supportive.
Hostility to drone surveillance was immediate and ferocious after police first used the craft to check for possible violations of limited outdoor public movement permissions during France’s first COVID-19 lockdown.
Eventually the nation’s data and privacy protection watchdog obtained a legal ban of the practice, forcing the government to pass a law permitting such deployment – which was itself later struck down on legal grounds. A text tailored to clear such vetting was subsequently voted through last year.
Read: France approves police drone response to rioting despite public opposition to UAV surveillance
The resulting law imposes a series of approval requirements ahead of deployment by French police, and limits on how long captured images may be stored. Despite that green light, law enforcement officials in France wary of continued opposition have sparingly used drones for surveillance – most recently flying them for situational awareness purposes during the week of rioting in suburban cities across the nation.
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