[Infowarrior] - Lawmakers in France Move to Vastly Expand Surveillance

[Richard Forno]

Lawmakers in France Move to Vastly Expand Surveillance

By ALISSA J. RUBIN

MAY 5, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/06/world/europe/french-legislators-approve-sweeping-intelligence-bill.html

PARIS — The lower house of the French Parliament overwhelmingly approved a sweeping intelligence bill that, if it passes in the upper house, would give the government broad surveillance powers with little judicial oversight.

The measure would give French intelligence services the right to gather potentially unlimited electronic data from Internet communications, and to tap cellphones and capture text messages. It would force Internet providers to comply with government requests to sift through subscribers’ communications.

“The last intelligence law was done in 1991, when there were neither cellphones nor Internet,” said Manuel Valls, the prime minister, who took the unusual step of personally presenting the bill to the National Assembly instead of leaving it to the interior minister.

The bill will now go to the Senate for debate and a vote.

Even as the French push to vastly broaden data collection, the United States Congress is moving in the opposite direction and seeking to reduce the National Security Agency’s access to Internet data.

Mr. Valls promised, however, that the French law would be “targeted,” and insisted its main focus was to protect French citizens from terrorism.

“The means of surveillance for anticipating, detecting and prevention of attacks will be strictly limited,” he promised.

Opponents, including lawyers, Internet companies and human rights groups, say that the law’s text contradicts the prime minister’s assurances.

“It is a state lie,” said Pierre-Olivier Sur, the head of the Paris bar association. “This project was presented to us as a way to protect France against terrorism, and if that were the case, I would back it,” he said.

“But it is being done to put in place a sort of Patriot Act concerning the activities of each and everyone,” he said, referring to the American legislation that among other things authorized extensive electronic surveillance as a way to intercept terrorist activity.

Mr. Sur said he and others worried that the measure could be used to monitor any behavior the government viewed as potentially disruptive.

In the current text of the proposed law it states that the intelligence services can propose surveillance to protect “national independence, the integrity of French territory and national defense” and to “prevent terrorism.”

It also can be used to “prevent attacks on the republican form of institutions,” and to fight organized crime.

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