French authorities plan to use facial recognition technology, mobile phone geolocation, and telephone interception to investigate violence and looting following demonstrations on 17 October 2026.
Darmanin also announced plans to use facial recognition capabilities associated with the Traitement d’antécédents judiciaires (TAJ), France’s police records database, to compare facial images with those circulating on social media.
Social media content and geolocation information are also being used to reconstruct incidents and identify individuals potentially involved in criminal activity.
Its inspections did not establish operational use of real-time facial recognition in public spaces by the police or gendarmerie.
The use of facial recognition technology alongside social media intelligence raises specific questions about how publicly available images can be repurposed for biometric identification.