Security at the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games won't just be a matter of police on the street. It also relies on the ability to anticipate threats to this global competition. In response to requests from the intelligence services mobilized for the upcoming summer event, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has thus decided to loosen the reins on the surveillance resources available to French spies.

According to Le Monde sources, the Prime Minister's office is putting the finishing touches to a provisional, classified decree, which will ramp up by 20% information-gathering services (wiretapping, geolocation, computer data, image and sound capture, etc.) for the duration of the Olympics.

The intelligence services seemed to assume that they would have a free hand, but the supervisory bodies pointed out that, while monitoring an exceptional event required resources, this could not be an open door to unbridled surveillance.

A diversity of threats

Two meetings, on January 29 and February 5 with prefect Pascal Mailhos, the national coordinator for intelligence and the fight against terrorism, and a close adviser to President Macron, led to a compromise.

These meetings were arranged jointly with Serge Lasvignes, president of the National Oversight Commission for Intelligence-Gathering Techniques, the only independent counterweight to state surveillance, which issues an advisory opinion on each request. Some of the participants told Le Monde that the atmosphere was quite polite.

The intelligence services justified their expectations by describing the "diversity of threats" and the resources they would have to deploy during the competition. They also underlined their fear of overloading the Commission, whose resources are limited. The Commission dismissed the concern, stating it would reinforce its staff during the Games.

Around the table were Julien Le Guen, the Prime Minister's adviser on internal security, prefect Michel Cadot, inter-ministerial delegate for the Olympic Games, and representatives from the following services: internal security (DGSI) and external security (DGSE), military intelligence, intelligence from the Paris Police Prefecture, territorial intelligence, and the inter-ministerial control group (GIC), which gathers authorization requests from the police and intelligence services and submits them to the authorities.

Monthly operational threat meetings

The legislator has set a quota for the number of interception ("wiretapping") requests made by the GIC, to limit the number of authorizations in force at any one time. The prime minister sets the quota, after consulting the Commission de contrôle des techniques de renseignement. In 2022, the quota was 3,800 for 12,798 applications. It could rise to 4,560 during the Olympic Games.

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