Brest Police Seizure of School Photos Sparks Privacy Controversy

Brest police seizure of school yearbook photos controversy, Digi Mart USA News (Brest, Finistère, France): Controversy is growing in Brest, in the Finistère department of France, after police seized the class photo directories of several schools during a student movement. At a rally on Monday, unions, students and parents denounced what they called a “fichage,” or profiling.

On Wednesday, two plainclothes officers arrived at the student life offices of three establishments at the Kerichen school complex, the epicenter of the protest. Without notifying the principals, they invoked a judicial requisition to obtain the names, first names and photos of nearly 4,500 students.

Marie Dagnaud, regional co-secretary of the CGT Educ’action union and a teacher at the Vauban high school, said the move seemed “completely disproportionate.” Several union organizations said at the rally that they intended to refer the matter to the Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL), France’s data protection authority.

A parent said the seizure was a first. “Clearly, this is a first.

We thought this personal data was safe, and apparently it was not. We have contacted lawyers and we can ask whether everything was done correctly,” the parent said.

Julie Le Goïc, a history and literature teacher and LFI municipal councillor, criticized both the volume of data seized and the absence of a prior investigation. “For a handful of people who committed an act, do we really need to take thousands of identity photos?” she said.

In response to the concern of teachers and parents, the principals of the affected schools sent a letter to families describing the measure as “targeted and supervised.”

Contacted by reporters, the Brest state prosecutor, Stéphane Kellenberger, said a criminal investigation against unknown persons was “underway, giving rise to all useful investigations and verifications.”

In a statement dated November 7, the Syndicat des avocats de France noted that, under a European directive, “photos of faces constitute sensitive personal data whose acquisition through requisition by judicial authorities should respond only to absolute necessity.”