The top judicial court in France passed a bill that drastically extends the government's powers of surveillance, despite the last-ditch campaign efforts of leftist civil liberties groups.
The bill was introduced after the terrorist attack on the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, which resulted in the deaths of 12 staff members. The shooting was perpetrated in response to Charlie Hebdo's satirical drawings and cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.
As of now, the bill gives the French government NSA-like privileges over its citizenry, which include monitoring phone calls and emails and implanting bugs without judiciary verification. In a worst-case scenario, this means that the government could spy on whomever it wants, whenever it pleases.
The bill also allows for the installation of informational, electronic lockboxes — or "black boxes" — which collect and analyze metadata, making the digital movements of millions accessible to government intelligence.
In an email to Tech Times, political scientist Ariane Chebel d'Appollonia, a professor at the School Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) at Rutgers University and senior researcher at the Center for Political Research, Sciences Po Paris (Cevifpof), described the concerns she had over the vagueness instilled in the newly passed bill.
"French Internet service providers and hosting companies will have to install a new system in their infrastructure to filter all traffic — when someone is watching videos related to terrorism, and then record everything you do online. Yet, what constitutes 'terrorism' remains unclear."
The Conseil Constitutionnel — France's judicial governmental branch, similar to the U.S. Supreme Court — ruled that the bill did not violate any constitutional rights, with the exception of three provisions listed within it that did not meet the requirements of the legislature. According to Le Monde, these provisions would have allowed "intelligence services, if in an operational emergency, to derogate from the Prime Minister's authority."
Despite the extraction of these provisions, the other ones remain intact, their miasmic meanings notwithstanding; people like Amnesty International deputy director Gauri van Gulick have expressed major concern over legislation that gives the government such incendiary power — especially provisions with indefinite phrasing like "organizational delinquency" — which can be readily manipulated.
"The bill as it stands is vague, risks abuse and casts the net of surveillance disproportionately wide," said van Gulik back in April, adding that it would be a step "[towards] a surveillance state."
"The bill actually includes policies and CT [counter-terrorism] measures that are already implemented," clarified Chebel d'Appollonia, alluding to legislation passed in 2005 that allows for suspected terrorists to be detained while evidence is gathered against them.
"From the government perspective, this bill helps clarifying existing CT strategies. On the other hand, it has been drafted in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks — one can suspect that the government is using the current fears of terrorism as a way to legitimate its own political agenda."
While the bill has garnered comparisons to the Patriot Act, it might turn out to be an undersell.
"This bill is even broader than the Patriot Act. It gives further powers to intelligence services with no clear judicial monitoring," d'Appollonia emphasized.
Though this might sound distressing for some, the cultural prioritization of security over privacy differs from that of other countries, like the U.S.
"Their main concern is to fight terrorism — mostly Islamic terrorism in a current context of Islamophobia," said d'Appollonia. "France already had the most extensive CT framework in Europe. Other European intelligence services will envy their French colleagues even more."
Photo: Miguel Discart | Flickr
