France Steps Up Citizen Surveillance

The president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, has decided to increase the amount of surveillance in public places in an effort to keep citizens safer by installing more police video cameras on city streets and sidewalks. There are already 300,000 of cameras set up in public places but Sarkozy wants to triple that number in the next few years.

The French government also has granted itself access to information every citizen’s bank cards, Internet searches, subway cards, electronic tollbooth passes, and more. Most citizens in France don’t know about the secret tracking devices and people have even been refused loans and lost their jobs due to errors that they have caused.