The use of police surveillance drones to monitor May Day protests in France has been challenged by rights groups who say they are illegal and a violation of privacy.
Several NGOs filed court complaints over decrees made by department prefects authorising the drones to be used for security reasons.
Challenges in Paris and Bordeaux were rejected hours before protests kicked off on Monday, with administrative courts in both cities ruling the airborne cameras would give police the wider overview of marches necessary to maintain public order.
The courts did not accept the drones posed a serious attack on a fundamental freedoms.
Partial win
However the NGOs won a partial victory in Normandy on Sunday when a court in Rouen suspended parts of a decree permitting police to use drones at a protest in the port city of Le Havre.
While conceding the drones were likely to improve security at the demonstration – especially given the violence of previous pension protests in Le Havre – the judge also scaled back the conditions of their use.
The "large perimeter" in which the drones were to be flown, and the approval of their use until eight hours after the march had ended, exceeded “in time and space” the need to ensure the protest’s security, the judge said.
The prefect’s order therefore carried "a serious and manifestly illegal infringement of the freedom to come and go and the right to privacy”, he added.
Use of the drones was banned in certain streets, while they were not permitted before 2pm elsewhere in the flight perimeter.
In March, France's CNIL data privacy watchdog asked for the publication of a detailed policy of drone use, including how the information collected by the drones would be used.
