Paris Olympics: Data from millions of vehicles collected for the “Anticipate the Games” platform

Unsplash An application developed by the government to find out about the roads during the Paris Olympic Games, called “Anticipating the Games” will track millions of drivers to detect their vehicles.

In addition to the major disruptions to road traffic in the capital, motorists will also have to worry about their personal data. An application developed by the government to find out about roads during the Paris Olympic Games, called “Anticipate the Games”, will follow millions of motorists to detect their vehicles and indicate in real time to its users which roads are the most congested. This is another controversial measure taken in the context of these Games, after the introduction of a QR Code to drive in the capital or the use of AI-powered cameras for surveillance. 

Announced for the Olympic Games, the disruptions to road traffic in the Paris region are already starting to be felt. “There are disruptions planned and we are starting to experience them,” acknowledged last Thursday the Minister Delegate for Transport, Patrice Vergriete, after Parisian roads were more congested than usual in recent days with the closure of three major roads to prepare for the Olympic Games.  

Data from millions of motorists collected 

“The population of the Paris region had not fully understood that the disruptions would also be before the Games,” he explains. “We are beginning to realize that the Games require preparation, both for security reasons and for setting up infrastructure,” he said, stressing that the difficulties will continue even “after the Paralympic Games.”  

“Little by little things will improve, but the facilities will not be dismantled in one day,” Vergriete justifies. 

At the beginning of April, the government warned the French. On the occasion of the Olympic Games, “an increase in the use of public transport and roads is to be expected. Certain roads will be impacted by traffic restrictions, with lanes dedicated to accredited vehicles and secure perimeters around the event sites,” we read in a press release from the Ministry of the Economy.  

This announcement is mainly that of the site “Anticipate the games”, launched by the Ministry of Transport. What the press release tells us is that this web application will provide “a wealth of information to support companies in implementing [transport] solutions aimed at maintaining activity during this period”.  

Using an interactive map, this site should make it possible to “reduce the number of trips, shift delivery times or the working hours of employees who have to travel, change their itinerary or change their means of transport”.  

The map then makes it possible to “view, hour by hour, traffic forecasts and the expected impacts on their travel on roads and public transport during the Games period”. 

What the press release from the Ministry of Economy does not tell us is how it intends to measure this traffic. The details are revealed by TomTom, a Dutch company that publishes route planning software, which is contributing to the implementation of this application with other service providers, the Paris prefecture and the Ministry of Ecological Transition. 

To function, “Anticipate the Games” already requires “knowing road closures, access points, routes that are being set up, etc., to directly report the information in our mapping and help to smooth traffic flow,” explains Léo Sei, vice-president in charge of software strategy at TomTom, relayed by the Journal Du Net (JDN). 

QR Code, VSA … An “exception” that sends shivers down the spine back 

The site must also rely, to measure traffic, on data collected directly from vehicles. TomTom, which operates more than 600 million vehicles worldwide, collects them from partner manufacturers.  

The manager wants to be reassuring, stating that “the data is anonymized. We do not know who is driving but we see that a point is moving on a given road at a given speed. The vehicles are our primary sensors and we have enough of them connected to our platform for the information to be representative,” he says. “We have detection systems that will inform us, by analyzing the data, if there is no more information on a certain lane for an hour, this is not normal and the lane is closed,” he explains.  

This card is in addition to other controversial measures adopted in anticipation of the 2024 Olympic Games. In April, and four years after the COVID pandemic and the restrictive measures on individual freedom, the QR Code was officially introduced and made mandatory for moving around the capital, according to security perimeter zones. 

The CNIL has also expressed reservations and recommendations, particularly on the collection of photographs and copies of identity documents, questioning the necessity of this operation. A collection that can just as easily be carried out by algorithmic video surveillance (VSA), legalized in France “on an experimental basis” on the occasion of the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games and considered by players in the digital sector as an important step towards facial recognition.  

According to the association La Quadrature du Net, around fifty French cities are already testing VSA. The Olympic Games, a grandiose sporting event or a foretaste of an Orwellian world ?

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