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The northern French city of Valenciennes has been warned over its potential use of CCTV cameras, as the Huawei machines have a 鈥減articularly intrusive character鈥�, France鈥檚 data protection authority CNIL has said.

The Nord city鈥檚 monitoring La Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libert茅s (CNIL) on August 3.

In a warning dated May 12, CNIL said: 鈥淸Valenciennes] concluded an agreement with the company Huawei, by which the company can give the city, free of charge, a fleet of high-definition cameras, deployed from April 2018, as well as three software programs for the automated analysis of images captured by the video protection system.鈥�

An inspection from February 12, 2020 concluded that "an automated number plate reading device" as well as "assisted image analysis devices" had also been made available.

CNIL said that the numberplate reading 鈥渨as, according to the information provided by the city authorities, intended to respond automatically to requests from law enforcement agencies".

And yet, it said that this was illegal.

The statement explained: "Automated number plate reading cannot be lawfully implemented by the municipality of Valenciennes in order to respond to requests from law enforcement agencies.鈥�

Moreover, the use of assisted image analysis devices is "likely to give rise to a high risk for the rights and freedoms" of the public, it said.

The warning sent by CNIL is 鈥渘ot a public decision鈥�, but is 鈥渋ntended to alert the managing department that the device intended to be used by the city does not comply with the laws on the protection of personal data鈥�, it told the AFP.

The mairie of Valenciennes has not responded to AFP requests for comment.

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