Technopolice on Félix Tréguer

The Eternal Return of Facial Recognition

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 13:05:02 +0000

This Op-Ed is adapted from a text originally published on AOC.

In May 2025, Gérald Darmanin was getting restless. Overtaken on the right by his successor at the Ministry of Interior, Bruno Retailleau, the new Minister of Justice apparently found it difficult to hang up his apron as “France’s top cop.” So he pulled out of his hat a seemingly novel proposal: the legalization of real-time facial recognition.

The ink on the War on Drugs law, with its array of new police surveillance measures, was not yet dry— the Constitutional Council would rule on it a few days later—but the minister was already on to his next move. After his announcement, his office would confirm to AFP that a working group was about to be launched to “create a legal framework” so as to “introduce this measure into our legislation.” According to the minister, who in 2022 said he opposed facial recognition, “using technology and facial recognition are the solutions to drastically combat insecurity.” A few days later, his rival Retailleau would follow suit, calling for “highly regulated” use of real-time facial recognition in the context of criminal investigations.

My new book "Technopolice" is out!

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The book Technopolice (in French only) is out! Get it from Éditions Divergences.

Here is the summary:

“Drones, predictive software, algorithmic video-surveillance, facial recognition: the use of the latest technologies of control is becoming commonplace within the police. Far from curbing crime, all these innovations are actually amplifying state violence. They place the city under siege and close up our political imaginations. This is what this book shows by drawing on experiences and knowledge forged during recent struggles against police surveillance. From the security industry to the Ministry of the Interior, from the CNIL to the officer’s vehicle on patrol, it connects the dots between the growing techno-solutionist hegemony contributed and the current authoritarian drift.”

Surveillance State of Play in France

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 12:18:30 +0000

I wrote a short chapter on digital surveillance for a collective work entitled Le Nouveau Monde, which has just been published by Amsterdam Editions. Over 1,000 pages and nearly 100 authors paint a “picture of neoliberal France”.

For my part, I have attempted in a few pages to describe the expansion of digital surveillance in recent years, its promoters, its methods, and its effects, while trying to place it within the longer history of information technology.

Government & Industry Working Hand in Hand to Impose Facial Recognition

Mon, 28 Oct 2019 10:39:54 +0000

Op-Ed in French written with Martin Drago, lawyer at La Quadrature du Net, and published in Le Monde on October 25, 2019.

L’inévitable débat sur la reconnaissance faciale arrive enfin en France, et le gouvernement esquisse sa réponse. Dans un entretien paru dans Le Monde du 15 octobre, le secrétaire d’Etat au numérique Cédric O, ancien cadre du groupe Safran, a notamment estimé qu’« expérimenter » la reconnaissance faciale était « nécessaire pour que nos industriels progressent ».