Let's play a game called "guess who manages CCTV surveillance all over France"...

'Vidéoprotection' ...or Big Brother?
Connexion edition: March 2011

Privacy campaigners are worried about a nationwide plan to treble the number of public CCTV cameras in cities, towns and villages across France.

President Sarkozy wants 2011 to be the year that "vidéoprotection" goes mainstream, and has set a target of 60,000 cameras watching public spaces around the country by the end of this year, up from the current 20,000.

Nice has recently led the way by installing hundreds of cameras linked to a state-of-the-art surveillance centre, and Paris is set to follow. The word videosurveillance is rarely used, with public officials preferring terms such as vidéoprotection, vidéoprévention and even vidéotranquillité.

However, the biggest growth has been in the private use of CCTV. The French data protection authority, Cnil (the Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés) says it is aware of more than 400,000 privately run CCTV cameras in France. Cnil is concerned that the safeguards in place to protect people cannot cope with a sharp rise in the use of videosurveillance.

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