In the countryside as in the city, CCTV cameras are flourishing. Even in a small
village in Orne, elected officials spread fear to better control and monitor thepopulation. Popular education and the organization of the first concerned willmake it possible to fight against the technopolice. ---- During a debatescreening around the documentary A People who keep themselves wise by DavidDufresne organized by the UCL liaison group of Orne, a question is asked: "How tofight in the countryside, far from the big urban mobilizations? In the midst ofthe debate, we learn that the mayor LR of the town of Putanges-le-Lac, 2,400inhabitants, intends to install 21 cameras for a budget of 240,000 euros (towhich it will be necessary to add around 10,000 euros of maintenance per year ).The collective Vivre Ensemble Putanges (VEP) is therefore set up to alert thepopulation and fight against the installation of this video surveillance system,intended to monitor the lake of the town and fight against incivility (wilddumping of garbage, rodeos of mopeds , felt tag at the bus stop, etc.).In France, video surveillance is already more than 93,000 installations on publicroads and yet... It is only useful in 0 to 3% of cases solved by the police andthe gendarmerie; in 97% to 99% of cases, cameras are of little or no use ininvestigations; it opens the door to video-verbalization and facial recognition(with high error rates for racialized people, etc.); it's 100% of the passers-bywatched: we are all presumed guilty!Collusion between elected officials and businessesMany actions have gradually been put in place: a petition against this project,boxing to inform all the inhabitants of the municipality, tracts on the markets,a dialogue with the municipality to obtain information and signify the oppositionor the questioning of the usefulness of such a monitoring device, and thiswithout any real answer.At the same time, the VEP collective launched an appeal before the administrativecourt of Caen to challenge the prefectural authorization concerning theinstallation of these cameras. The collective is accompanied and defended by alawyer from La Quadrature du Net, specialized in this subject.Today, the collective tries to push the reflection beyond the simple problem oflocal democracy and surveillance of the population in Putanges-le-Lac, graduallyrealizing that the subject is much broader than a local problem, and that it isfar from only concerning the cameras. Thus, new actions make it possible tocontinue the work of popular education, and of politicization of the bocage:projections debates (7 billion supervised, Commune commune), a training evening(history, progression of the surveillance, taking a step back on the globalsituation in France) in the presence of the CROC, an anti-repression collectivefrom Caen. All this in a municipality that has never known any protest fordecades... Mobilizing and bringing back into the debate people who have beendrunk on right-wing security propaganda is not easy. Locally, the same right,which today wants to install video surveillance, has long been operating in aclannish way. It is omnipresent, in all organizations, boards of directors, andimportant associations. The method is quite classic: we caress the elders in thedirection of the hair, while feeding their fears and stigmatizing the young andthe precarious: increases in subsidies to rural seniors' clubs while we cut thosefor culture; a clear desire to monitor young people, while being systematicallyon their backs, preventing them from gathering on the public highway;disinformation campaign on the increase in crimes, with the support of false andmanipulated figures. Like at the public information meeting where they includeddomestic violence (on the rise since the Covid) in order to inflate the figure ofviolence in the municipality, and thus better justify the installation of videosurveillance in the public space. Which will obviously change absolutely nothingfor the women abused in their homes... This cynical instrumentalization istypical of their way of proceeding.Guarantee freedoms through self-organizationAnother way of "controlling" campaigns is the infusion of subsidies intoimportant associations: they create a dependency on money, then in return, theyplace their pawns in the boards of directors, locking in decisions in theirdirection. Incidentally, this clan does not hesitate to enrich their"entrepreneur" friends to the detriment of nature, climate, biodiversity, andfreedoms. Video surveillance in the countryside is therefore one more step in thelocking of individual freedoms and critical thought, which is in no way"republican". One more sign towards a totalitarian drift of our campaigns.Self-organization, repoliticization, mobilization and critical analysis of localpolicies, it is indeed a process of struggles and social transformation that isbeing built, far from the pseudo-alternative "bobo new age" initiatives that wesee flourishing here with the arrival of CSP+ neo-rurals. It is also one of thosefamous "third places" that closed its doors to us without any problem havingarisen, simply because we are "politicized". Which strangely has not beenreproached to the deputy in the campaign Jerome Nury relaying his passage in thissame place on social networks...Behind the appearance of a conservative desert, rurality is a living politicaltesting ground that pushes us out of our usual militant reflexes. Here aselsewhere, no to the technopolice!Maxime (UCL Orne), Muhsin (Paris north-east) and Pablo (UCL Saint-Denis)"SAFE" CITY: PRIVATIZATION OF SECURITY POLICIESThe issue of security has often been at the heart of electoral campaigns since2002. In France, in the era of algorithmic governance, large industrial groupsare positioning themselves on the markets for "smart" and "safe" city projects byallied with local elected officials. They take advantage of computer tools in theurban public space to monitor, predict, and control the flow of people and goods.In Marseille, the Big data observatory of public tranquility, entrusted to thecompany Engie Ineo, integrates sources from municipal public services but alsofrom "external partners", such as the Ministry of the Interior, which centralizesmany data relating to the location of mobile phones, and which make it possibleto map "population flows" in real time.Another "safe" city technique is based on the automatic analysis of videosurveillance streams. The State has invested hundreds of millions of euros in thepurchase of cameras since 2007. So-called "intelligent" video surveillanceprojects are being set up in the big cities in Toulouse, Nice, Marseille, Parisand recently in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis to experiment with facialrecognition, despite the reservations of the National Commission for Computingand Liberties (CNIL).https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Videosurveillance-le-fleau-s-etend_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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