France 'suspends' creation of big-brother database

by Peter Sayer

April 24, 2008 —

The French government will "suspend" the use of new software for
recording the personal habits and affiliations of its citizens in a police database,
following an outcry by civil rights groups.

Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie took the decision Tuesday to
suspend trials of the Ardoise software while officials consider how to reconcile
privacy rights and operational needs, her spokesman confirmed Thursday.

Ardoise is the front end for a new police central database, Ariane, which is
destined to replace those used by France's two law enforcement groups, the Police
and the Gendarmerie.

Still in a test phase, Ardoise and Ariane are intended to help combat crime
by encouraging the services to share information, and by allowing them to data-mine
the pooled data. The existing Police computer, STIC, and that of the Gendarmerie,
Judex, hold information about criminals, suspects, witnesses and victims of
crime.

Campaigners say that Ardoise infringes civil liberties by allowing law enforcers
to tag a person's file with annotations including "runaway child,"
"handicapped," "homeless," "trade unionist," "alcoholic,"
"narcotics user," "transvestite," "transgendered,"
"homosexual," "prostitute," "person who frequents prostitutes,"
"psychologically disturbed" or "member of a sect," simply
by picking them from a list.

"Membership of trade union or one's sexual preferences have no place in
a police file in a democracy," said online rights group Odebi, adding that
it is not enough simply to suspend implementation of the database.

The database also holds information about religion, sexual orientation and
race, according to the Interior Ministry.

It's not the first time that a French government has faced protests over the
creation of a central database linking government computer systems. The government's
plans to create the System for Administrative Files Automation and the Registration
of Individuals (Safari) caused a scandal when they were uncovered in 1974, leading
to the creation of the National Data Processing and Liberties Commission (CNIL).
Safari also prompted a series of tough data protection laws obliging database
owners to register their activities with the CNIL and giving citizens the right
to correct data held about them.

The CNIL is among the organizations angered by Ardoise, because the government
has not sought the necessary legal approval for combining the data held in the
various police databases, its president Alex Türk wrote in an open
letter to the Minister of the Interior on April 15. Such processing is supposed
to be approved by the CNIL and by a statutory order of the Council of State.

The Ministry replied to that letter saying that the field for storing a person's
sexual orientation, religion or race in Ardoise is only supposed to be completed
if it is relevant to an investigation, and that the CNIL has in any case already
approved storage of the same kinds of information in the Police database STIC.

Tuesday's suspension only concerns the test phase for Ardoise "for the
simple reason that software can't enter service until the CNIL has given its
opinion and Council of State has examined the statutory order concerning the
new system," the Alliot-Marie's spokesman Gerard Gachet wrote in an e-mail
Thursday.

After the CNIL's April 15 letter, Alliance Police Nationale, a trade union
for police officers, called for the test version to be amended in accordance
with CNIL's recommendations so that its use could not lead to discrimination.

Another police union, Synergie-Officiers, said the software had been created
too hastily, without consideration of operational needs or officers' opinions.

But Synergie-Officiers supported storage of information about the race and
religion of suspects and victims. In France some violent crimes attract tougher
sentences if motivated by racial or religious hatred, and the union warned that
if campaign groups want such hate crimes pursued more vigorously, then police
need a way to identify the relevant information about attackers and victims
during investigations.

IDG News Service