"Why do the police want to identify us when they are hiding their faces?
“Asks Paolo Cirio, who has created an artistic project to alert the French to the dangers of facial recognition.
Last week, the Italian posted on the walls of the capital, photos of French police, taken during protests.
About fifty.
“I processed these images with facial recognition software, which is very common, and posted them on a website.
Anyone who recognizes one of these faces can enter their name to create a database that includes around 4000 police officers ”.
The police are outraged
The artist's goal is to take the police at their own game, by demonstrating that "facial recognition is an extremely serious violation of public freedom".
He chose France “because it is one of the worst countries in Europe, in terms of the use of facial recognition, without supervision or regulation.
France even sells its technology to China ”.
In fact, according to an Amnesty International survey, "three companies based in France, Sweden and the Netherlands sell digital surveillance systems, including to key players in the Chinese mass surveillance apparatus."
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Indignant by the artist's approach, the Alliance Police Nationale union approached the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, who immediately asked for the photos to be removed from the artist's site on pain of prosecution.