French police records

In colloquial French, a simpleton is said to be "neuneu".
The expression "Je suis neuneu" evokes "Je suis Charlie".

But the police don't necessarily see things in that light.

In French, a card created by the police to identity an individual is called a fiche. Recently, a much-talked-about new kind of police record has come into existence. It’s referred to as a fiche S (S-record), where the letter S stands for « sûreté » (security) as in the expression « atteinte à la sûreté de l’Etat » (state security threat). To call a spade a spade, while simplifying the situation abominably, anybody with an S-record is “largely” on the way to being looked upon as a terrorist threat… where the sense of my last remark depends greatly on the meaning associated with the “largely” adverb. Theoretically, an S-record should be created by French authorities for anybody who might have behaved as if he were a potential terrorist. But the inverse is not true. The fact that a certain individual is associated with an S-record does not indicate that she/he is a potential terrorist. It merely means that this person interests the police, for any of many possible reasons.

Consequently, the subject of S-records must be handled in an extremely subtle manner… which is not easy for the Australian-born author of the Antipodes blog, who knows next to nothing about French police methods. Meanwhile, the general public in France hears a lot about this new variety of police record, and it’s easy to imagine that one knows what it’s all about. But we don’t really understand anything at all, because the basic idea of sound security methods consists of making sure that they remain as enigmatic as possible. And that’s my final word on what I intended to say.... which I wish I'd never started.