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France 'Suspends' Creation of Big-brother Database

By Peter Sayer, IDG News Service (Paris Bureau)

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.

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