Under the dusty eyes of surveillance cameras,
the foundations of a sentient city
2022 · Investigation
· Vidéo
In November 2021, I received the magazine Orléans Mag' in my mailbox. Flipping through the pages, I learned that the city had volunteered to experiment with the installation of four sound anomaly detectors proposed by the startup
Sensivic. The sound detectors, called SoundScanner, are coupled with 360° cameras and will direct their lenses toward triggering sounds. When an "anomalous" sound is recognized by the system, it sends a notification to the Surveillance Center, and the operators then decide whether or not to send law enforcement.
This is what is called algorithmic audio surveillance (ASA). The municipality of Orléans has entered into a partnership with this private company, experimenting with smart sensors and turning its citizens into guinea pigs for a security project. However, in 2019, the installation of sound sensors in Saint-Étienne caused a stir when these devices were declared illegal by the CNIL, especially since these devices targeted a specific population. At that time, the municipality of Orléans had already responded positively to their deployment.
To learn more about these devices, I requested an interview with Sensivic, the company based at Lab’O, an incubator for projects in the city of Orléans. I was welcomed by the founder, Pascale Demartini, who is in charge of the company's strategy and development. Next to her was her husband, Jean Demartini, who handles the product design of the company. Jean Demartini is an engineer, Doctor in Physical Sciences, and has notably been a researcher at the CNRS.
Pascale Demartini explained that the SoundScanner learns to recognize specific sounds: glass breaking, shockwaves, motorized tools, voices, etc. Her explanation of how the SoundScanner works technically remained superficial: a trade secret. The system consists of a dynamic model, which continuously learns the sound environment of the location, detecting sound anomalies, which are out of the ordinary in the soundscape.
“What we envision for the future are predictive systems. The population must be protected from the tiny minority capable of causing disturbances or from events that could create problems. By having field study tools, cameras, sound sensors, measuring air quality, UV levels, and waste levels in bins, we will eventually succeed in ensuring that everything happening in the city is measured, in order to create models and statistical studies to predict risks and stop dissident phenomena.”
The goal is therefore to widely equip the city of the future with various sensors so that its citizens are counted, tracked, predicted, and potentially punished. What we generally observe, whether in the promotional spots for safe city projects or in the shared vision of these companies, is the vision of a fluid city, where citizens are always on the move and never stop. No picnics, no gatherings, no crowds. A city where nothing happens anymore.
Through the sharing of my information with La Quadrature du Net and the daily newspaper l’Humanité, my research contributed to the fight against the deployment of this type of automated surveillance experiment, since after the appeal filed by La Quadrature du Net in December, the administrative court of Orléans confirmed that algorithmic audio surveillance (ASA) is illegal. However, since my last visits to Orléans, the sensors are still in place.
By re-listening to the soundtracks associated with the videos, I was able to spot certain mechanisms of the cameras. They rotate every 30 seconds, scanning the landscape in 360° approximately every 2 minutes. Sometimes, the camera makes very subtle movements; by listening to the sound tracks, for example, you can hear distant tire screeches or loud music coming from a vehicle, all accompanied by a camera movement in their direction.
Photo : Paul de Lanzac
Photo : Paul de Lanzac