Hosts use the Olympics to bolster police power — harming civil liberties - The Washington Post
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/04/03/olympics-police-paris
When the French National Assembly approved the use of artificial intelligence video surveillance at the Paris 2024 Olympics on March 23, it made France the first European Union country to legalize such a wide-reaching AI-powered surveillance system and left civil-liberties advocates livid. They argued that the move not only undermines the E.U.’s AI Act regulating the technology, but also greenlights potentially massive privacy violations inside France.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard blasted the law’s potential to “amplify racist policing and threaten the right to protest.” Callamard’s fears are justified. In the past, the Olympic Games have opened the door for laws that infringe upon civil liberties and the right to protest.
Local and national security officials over the past several decades have used the Olympics to generate huge sums of cash and secure special tools and laws that would be difficult to acquire during normal political times. These new laws can stay on the books and technologies remain in the hands of the state after the Games, reinforcing police power and squelching political dissent. As a result, the Olympics help normalize technologies and practices that undermine human rights, despite the Olympic Charter’s stated commitment to “promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.”