Loss of internet privacy made official in France

[Hervé]

‘Personal data exposé’: Outcry in France against new i-snooping law (http://rt.com/news/spy-law-negative-signal-133/)

Published time: December 12, 2013 15:28
Get short URL (http://rt.com/news/spy-law-negative-signal-133/)

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AFP Photo/ Jacques Demarthon

Outraged opponents of the new law allowing French intelligence and the government to spy on internet users without any authorization, say it will "weaken the country's position" in the European and international debate on protection of personal data.

The law, which was passed on Wednesday, will enable public officials – from local gendarmes and anti-terrorist agencies to tax authorities – to request connection data transmitted in real time, including location information from cell phones.

Until now, demands for data interception had to be authorized by a judge of the National Commission for the Control of Security Intercepts.

However, from now on Article 13 of the new law allows intelligence services from the state's defense, interior, economy, tax and finance ministries to find out just about anything about any individual without authorization from a judge.

164 voted for the controversial law and 146 against in the French Senate. An amendment rejecting Article 13, tabled by activists from the Green Party, was thrown out.

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AFP Photo /Photo Patrick Bernard

Opponents are considering whether to refer the legislation to the constitutional court, France's highest legal authority, over the question of public freedom. But to get the law reviewed by the court, at least 60 senators and deputies should back the motion.

The Green Party, which has 27 members of parliament, said it is ready to join any group of deputies, regardless of party affiliation, to challenge the law's constitutionality.

"Doubts persist over the law, so it would be preferable that the Constitutional Court rules on whether it conforms to the principles of individual freedom guaranteed by the constitution," the Greens said in a statement.

Technology firms from the Association of Internet Services Communities (@SIC), including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Skype and AOL, also said they "regretted the adoption of the new law".

@SIC said that focusing on the issue of detailed invoices and geolocation, the "senators have forgotten that this text does not only apply to telecom operators, but to all internet intermediaries." As a result, @SIC said, "France has raised a number of concerns over protection of freedoms".

"There is no doubt this text will weaken the French position in the European and international debate on the protection of personal data," @SIC warned.

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AFP Photo/ Jacques Demarthon

The passing of the new legislation came as a surprise to many, given that less than two months ago, during a phone conversation with Barack Obama, François Holland expressed his "deep disapproval" at revelations that the NSA had been intercepting millions of phone calls in France. The French president described it as an "unacceptable practice".

Government officials argue that the new measure is a vital tool against global terrorism, organized crime and economic espionage to protect national security. The defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, maintains that "public liberties will be covered", maintaining the operational effectiveness of the new law.

The government says the spying will be overseen by an independent authority and by parliament.

However, the French Association of Software and Internet Solutions Editors (AFDEL), which represents 350 French software and internet companies, warned the new law may fuel the movement of citizen distrust towards technologies and Cloud computing solutions.

"This text may indeed represent a negative signal to the protection of personal data and come to offset the ongoing negotiations on the European level, aimed precisely to strengthen the legal framework of the protection of personal data," AFDEL said.

AFDEL President, Jamal Labed, said that in its current form the initiative is at odds with the objective of making the European space a zone of enhanced law for data protection.

[Anchor]

Pass me the "freedom fries" please.

I wonder if France have done enough now to get back into the US elite's good books?

[Sidney]

Me thinks they were about to get caught red handed (perhaps because of Snowden??) so they had to hurry up and legalize the crimes they have been committing for years. Sound familiar?? this of course is only my opinion.

[MorningSong]

My thoughts, exactly, Sidney!

[mosquito]

This is a good measure of how our species' trajectory remains unchanged but with a disturbingly increased velocity. How so ?

I lived in France in 2002, and NOT ONE person I spoke to was stupid enough to believe that the US/UK invasion of Iraq had anything to do with Saddam Hussein or WMD. EVERYONE said exactly the same thing ....... "les Americains veulent dominer le monde". I remember seeing magazine articles on the nauseating reaction of Americans to France's refusal to support their war. Who would have though that this once stubbornly independent nation could be so quickly roped into the war on freedom. What a sad day.

Is there anywhere left ? (Don't say Equador). Possibly Bhutan, which is virtually impossible to get into. Iceland ? Too cold and, if they have any sense, they'll be saying "no thanks" to immigrants. Fortunatley my inner world is one where I can live peacefully and privately.

[Frank V]

At least in France and in the Netherlands, the European Constitution was up for ratification by way of a referendum, and the people thus had a chance to say "no". Unfortunately, that was not the case in Belgium. The liberal then-Federal Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and his fellow Freemasons quickly pushed the ratification through parliament and it was accepted.

Also, since the change of government after the 2007 federal elections, we now have a Minister of Defense who is clearly pro-American and pro-militarist, and who has poured far more of our military resources into the war in Afghanistan. While our military was originally only there to offer logistic support to the Americans, they have since then been engaged in active combat missions, several of which were black ops.

Yet, there's a lot more going on over here in little Belgium that most of the world doesn't know about - and I think that even most Belgians don't know about it, or refuse to know about it. For instance...


In Belgium's colonial past, the Belgian government had the CIA murder Patrice Lumumba in Congo. The investigation was recently reopened at the request of the Lumumba family.

At the coronation of the late king Boudewijn (Baudouin, Baldwin) in 1953, Julien Lahaut, leader of the Communist Party, shouted the words "Vive la république!" ("Long live the republic!"), and he was assassinated within a week, courtesy of the royal family's entourage. Of course, the official version was quite a different story, and the man whom the official investigation deemed responsible for murdering Lahaut was himself found dead a while later, supposedly having committed suicide.

The Belgian prince Laurent, younger brother of the current monarch Philippe, has twice been implicated in scandals in which financial resources belonging to the Belgian military were diverted off the books to fund personal projects of his, such as the construction of his mansion. On both occasions, he was clearly protected and could not be subpoenaed.

The former Belgian king, Albert II, brother of the deceased king Boudewijn and father of Philippe, Laurent and their sister Astrid, was during Boudewijn's life implicated in a criminal investigation surrounding the Pink Ballets, a prostitution network with underage girls, specifically set up for the purpose of extorting powerful and influential people. Albert's name was stricken from the investigation, and it was later on "concluded" that the Pink Ballets did not exist and that they were a fabrication from one of the witnesses in the Dutroux affair, Regina Louff. She was further discredited as a witness, even in the Dutroux affair.

During the 1980s, there was a series of very violent holdups and robberies all over Belgium, committed primarily (albeit not exclusively) against the Delhaize supermarkets, by a gang known as "De Bende van Nijvel" ("The Gang of Nivelles", also called "the Brabant Killers", depending on the newspapers and the translation). Very little loot was ever won from these holdups, but the toll was bloody. 28 people were murdered - shot down in cold blood and without provocation, including women and children, and at least one police officer. The gang's modus operandi was that of a trained military commando team, and they had very powerful, military-style weapons. They also appeared to be more interested in bloodshed than in actual loot. The investigation was stonewalled from day one and has been sidetracked and taken away from its original investigators and handed over to other investigative teams several times, each time with the new investigative team having to study thousands of documents worth of evidence and reports. Several arrests were made, but the suspects were all let go of again because they either had nothing to do with the case or there was no evidence. Some of the traces in the investigation led to the Westland New Post, an extreme right-wing movement within the then-gendarmerie, while others led to Gladio, a network of CIA "sleeper" agents in Europe, intended as a stay-behind resistance movement for in case the Soviet Union were to invade Western Europe - Gladio itself has also already been tied to several right-wing terrorist attacks in Italy, Romania and other European countries. Up until this very day, the investigation into the Brabant Killers remains open, and all that is known with fair certainty is that one of them was mortally wounded by a police bullet, but his remains have so far never been recovered, despite ample dig-ups.


And there's lots more where all that came from... :-/