ArcaMax

PARIS – Remember how, as a kid, you’d discover things about your own home when guests were coming over? Like the fact that there was gold-plated cutlery or cool decor hidden away, or that mom could actually cook? That’s how Parisians feel during these Olympic Games. And many don’t want it to ever end.

The early stages of the Games felt exactly like your parents running around cracking the whip out of insecurity over their own lack of preparedness. In came the foreign police and military to help secure the city amongst 44,000 barriers, miles-long controlled zones requiring QR codes linked to detailed personal information, and the surveillance technology linking biometrics and artificial intelligence. And French law stipulates that those cameras and technology can stick around beyond the Olympics and Paralympics, until at least 2025 – as an “ experiment”, to “detect planned events in real time,” according to the legislation.

Sounds more like a soft launch for something permanent than a test. The idea of the state hoovering up data on every aspect of someone’s life, including their movements and transactions, is terrifying in light of the very real possibility of having it someday be used to prohibit access to everyday life. China already has a social credit system, and most of the rest of us were subjected to some form of it under Covid-related mandates.

On the other hand, one does have to concede that from a security standpoint, these Games have stood in stark contrast to daily life in the city. Many Parisians are admitting that they’ve never enjoyed their city as much as they have over the past two weeks – at least those who didn’t take off for the usual weeks-long French summer vacation, or to sidestep the anticipated Games chaos. The rampant graffiti is gone. Park fountains that you figured were just dilapidated monuments suddenly came to life and started spewing water. You can eat off the regularly waxed floors of the subway.

Pickpockets and other petty criminals and nuisances have been tackled – or at least deterred – by a heavy presence of domestic and foreign police and military officers. Known troublemakers convicted of various crimes have been assigned to their residence s by the French authorities for the duration of the Games. “I don’t have the right to leave my town, potentially I will lose my job and I have to report to the police station every day,” one such individual, who was convicted of hanging out in Syria with ISIS, told France Inter.

Human rights lawyers have decried a form of permanent punishment. Migrant camps have been dismantled and displaced elsewhere.

All of this is supposed to just be for the period of the Games, but many here are hoping that it continues.

Walking around the city, there are constant reminders that this isn’t the “real” everyday Paris, though. It’s just a Disney-style version of the city, complete with the adorable “ Phryges” – the red revolutionary Phrygian caps turned into arguably the most amusing Games mascots in the history of the Olympics – running around cracking smiles on even the iciest of faces. The monuments and historic sites have been privatized for Olympic events, with lineups rivaling those of amusement park rides. Smiling, friendly officers, recently more closely associated with protest crackdowns, have developed a rapport with the general public that’s more akin to that of a tour guide than a typical authority figure.

There’s already rumbling from Parisians who desperately want to maintain this same vibe after the Games tourists leave. But we all know what happens after Mom and Dad say goodnight to houseguests. It’s back to eating canned ravioli with the tarnished spoons.

And say goodbye until next time to that cute feather duster whose existence you’ve just discovered. Paris has now proven beyond all doubt that it can clean up the city when it wants to. But adoption of Games measures shouldn’t be a full meal deal. Enthusiasm for the reduced insecurity during these Games shouldn’t constitute a blanket free pass for the implementation of mass surveillance. At the very least, there needs to be a transparent and thorough public conversation about the specific value and effectiveness of these systems during the Games so people can decide for themselves to what extent the security tradeoff is worth compromising basic freedoms.

In the meantime, they could start by adopting the more classic, less intrusive measures that have now been proven effective. If you have to hide migrants by deporting them from the city, then clearly you have too many and you need a new migration policy to reflect that fact. If you have to tell convicted criminals not to leave home or city beyond the duration of their sentence, then obviously your sentences aren’t adequate. If people are marveling at the cleanliness of the subways and streets, then maybe that €1.4 billion spent to “clean up” the still hopelessly polluted Seine river, just so organizers could get some cool monument backdrop photos during the triathlon and marathon swimming, would be better spent on securing a lasting Games legacy of everyday hygiene and security.

It’s a classic right-wing approach to security, balancing freedom with basic common sense, that has become the hands-down gold medal favorite amid these Games.