The Ministry of the Interior has awarded the public contract for algorithmic video surveillance of the Paris Olympics (July 26-August 11) to four companies, for a total amount of 8 million euros.
Authorized by the 2023 Olympic law, the so-called “intelligent” cameras allow to report “suspect crowd movements”, “fire outbreaks”, or “the presence of a person in a prohibited area”. Algorithms are fed with images from cameras and drones to identify these “potentially risky events”.
Each of the four awarded lots – each valued at a maximum amount of 2 million euros – consists of “providing an algorithmic solution”, its installation and dismantling, training of “field actors”, and support in implementation, according to the notice of award published on Friday.
The contracts were awarded to Wintics (based in Paris), Videtics (located in the technopole of Sophia-Antipolis near Nice), Orange Business (Seine-Saint-Denis) and the French group Chapsvision, a specialist in data analysis (Hauts-de-Seine). Chapsvision offers a French alternative solution to the American giant Palantir, which provides its technologies to many intelligence services.
The events under surveillance must be detected without the use of facial recognition or biometric techniques, a commitment by the government.
According to an investigation by the investigative site Disclose published in November, the French law enforcement agencies acquired a video surveillance image analysis software from the Israeli company Briefcam in 2015, “in secret”, specialized in the development of software for algorithmic video surveillance and now owned by the Japanese giant Canon.
