Authorities in Lyon have used police drones to monitor a student mobilisation, with authorisation orders described as being issued largely after the drone flights. According to Mediapart, the Rhône prefecture began flying drones to supervise demonstrations after the mobilisation started. The outlet says the authorisation decisions were “quasi systématiquement” made after the fact, under France’s recent Ripost law, which it reports makes legal challenges to the legality of the surveillance difficult. Mediapart says that on 1, 2 and 5 October, the prefecture published images on its social media accounts to announce that it would use drones to monitor lycée students’ protests in Lyon. The report states that at the time those posts went up, no authorising order had yet been published to set out the rules for the drone deployments. The story is linked to official documents described by Mediapart under the heading “Autorisation captation d’image par aéronef,” covering the use of an aircraft to capture images. The report does not describe arrests, charges or prosecutions related to the drone monitoring. The issue highlighted by Mediapart is procedural: when drones are used for surveillance and when the authorisation orders are published, particularly in relation to the Ripost law framework.