Predictive Policing in France: Calling for a Ban
As part of a European initiative coordinated by Statewatch, me and my colleague Eda Nano worked with La Quadrature du Net for a report on the state of predictive policing in France. In light of the information gathered, and given the dangers these systems carry when they incorporate socio-demographic data as a basis for their recommendations, we call for their ban. After documenting back in 2017...
Systemic Opacity and Black Holes in Surveillance Oversight
My contribution to the recent symposium of the Commission nationale de contrôle des techniques de renseignement took the form of an article (in both French and English) in the journal Études françaises de renseignement et de cyber (French Studies on Intelligence and Cyber). In it, I revisit the systemic opacity that characterizes the surveillance activities of French intelligence services and the...
AI Action Summit: Accelerating, Whatever The Cost
This Op-Ed was first published in the newspaper La Croix. The Paris summit on artificial intelligence (AI) organized by France was held on February 10 and 11, 2025. It will go down in history as a great moment of acceleration. While French civil society is organizing, particularly through the Hiatus coalition launched on the initiative of La Quadrature du Net, to resist the surge of artificial...
The Startup Privilege
I have just published an article (in French, Spanish and Portuguese) in Le Monde diplomatique analyzing how technological innovation is used to justify increasing exemptions from fundamental rights, particularly in the field of digital surveillance. Summary This article examines how the discourse of innovation and the rhetoric of disruption are used to justify regulatory exemptions (aka...
My new book "Technopolice" is out!
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...
How State Surveillance Was Fought
In this month’s edition of Le Monde diplomatique, I have an article in French tracing the history of struggles against state surveillance in the United States in the sixties and seventies. Abstract Based on a longer study published earlier this month as a chapter, this article offers a historical perspective on resistance to state surveillance in the United States. It highlights strategies...
Promises & Pitfalls of Activist-Researcher Collaborations
In late January, I took a train up North to attend a conference on predictive policing organized at the IT University of Copenhagen. This international gathering brought together researchers working on the transformation of police surveillance in the digital age, with a particular focus on predictive policing. Predictive policing in France Together with Edlira Nano (who sadly could not make the...
New Book: Intelligence Oversight in Times of Transnational Impunity
We are pleased to announce the publication of our collective volume Intelligence Oversight in Times of Transnational Impunity: Who Will Watch the Watchers?, co-edited with Didier Bigo and Emma Mc Cluskey, published by Routledge. Abstract This volume, derived from the GUARDINT project, examines contemporary challenges in intelligence oversight within a context of growing transnationalization of...
From Free Internet to Techno-Authoritarian Drift
My interview (in French) with judge Judith Allenbach of the journal Délibérée has just been published. It provides an analysis of the the Internet’s trajectory, from initial emancipation promises to contemporary techno-authoritarian drift. Abstract This interview traces my own journey from the Internet’s early utopias to contemporary forms of control and surveillance characterizing...
New Edition: Counter-History of the Internet
I’m really glad to announced a revised and updated French edition of Counter-History of the Internet: From the 15th Century to Today, published by Agone, an independent publisher based in Marseille.1 The book is adapted from my PhD in Political Studies at EHESS and offers a foucaldian reinterpretation of Jürgen Habermas’ history of the public sphere. Publisher’s presentation...