Police nationale

One of two records (Police nationale and Gendarmerie nationale) for French use of BriefCam; the account below covers both forces.

This is more precise, and more interesting, than a flat operational status conveys, and is worth recording carefully. Investigative outlet Disclose revealed in November 2023 that police and gendarmerie had used BriefCam since 2015 without a clear legal basis, including its facial recognition capability, which is illegal in French public space. The gendarmerie suspended use three days after the report; the national police suspended use in December 2023. The official inter-inspectorate report, finalised February 2024 and published October 2024, examined approximately 600 total uses and found exactly one illegal facial-recognition use. It recommended lifting the suspension and continuing to use BriefCam in investigative services until it can be replaced by a sovereign French-developed system, Systeme V, which has no facial recognition capability and was still described as under development in parliamentary answers as recently as mid-2025. This entry is recorded as operational on the basis that the report recommended resuming use pending that replacement, but the transition to Systeme V should be treated as ongoing rather than complete.

Update, November 2026. The CNIL (Decision MED-2024-150 of 15 November 2024, summarised in its notice of 5 December 2024) served a formal notice on the Interior Ministry to send all missing conformity commitments and data protection impact assessments for its video-analysis software, and to remove or restrict BriefCam's facial recognition feature. The CNIL found that investigative services have used BriefCam-type software since 2015 on recorded footage in judicial investigations, that police and gendarmerie do not use augmented cameras on live public-road images for operational purposes, that one isolated facial recognition use in a judicial investigation was reported, and that no real-time facial recognition use was found. It treats these tools as judicial matching software governed by Articles 230-20 et seq. and R. 40-39 et seq. of the Code of Criminal Procedure and Decree 2012-687, with case-by-case magistrate authorisation.