French cops claimed to hold secret, illegal gypsy database
By Jane Fae Ozimek,
The Register
| 10. 09. 2010
The French national police force – la Gendarmerie – yesterday stood accused of operating a secret and illegal database of Roma and other travelling minorities.
The existence of this database was reported in great detail in yesterday's Le Monde. It came to light by chance, when a 48-page powerpoint presentation, prepared by a Commandant in the Central Bureau for prevention of Traveller Crime (OCLDI), and presented to a meeting of Transport Businesses in November 2004, turned up on the internet.
If confirmed, this database represents the logical conclusion to an ever-more-intrusive surveillance of travellers and ethnic minorities by the police – and is likely to prove doubly embarrassing to French President Nikolas Sarkozy. Firstly, because the very first article of the French Constitution asserts that the Republic "guarantees the equality before the law of all citizens, irrespective of racial origin or religion". Secondly, because M. Sarkozy was the focus for serious international criticism this summer when he stepped up the deportations of Roma from France to their native Romania and Bulgaria. EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding compared France's actions to...
Related Articles
By Jessica Hamzelou, MIT Technology Review | 07.30.2026
As of this week in Montana, any biotech company with an experimental drug has a clear path to selling it to consumers. Companies whose drugs have been through preliminary testing—sometimes in as few as 10 healthy people—can pay $12,500 to...
By Jessica Hamzelou, MIT Technology Review | 07.23.2026
When it comes to organ donation, time is everything. As soon as an organ has been carefully removed from a donor’s body, it starts to deteriorate. Surgeons have a matter of hours to get it into a recipient. Leave...
By Dhruv Mehrotra , Wired | 08.03.2026
On March 13, 2025, Hugo Moreno-Mendez arrived at the McLennan County Probation Department in Waco, Texas, expecting a routine probation check-in. Instead, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were waiting to arrest him.
According to a criminal complaint reviewed by WIRED...
By Nina Agrawal, The New York Times | 07.16.2026
Ethan White first noticed something was wrong at drum practice. A snare drummer in the University of Michigan marching band, he suddenly could no longer feel the muscles in his right hand gripping the drumstick. Weeks earlier, he had marched...
