“French
lawmakers are set to approve a new law Tuesday granting the state
sweeping surveillance powers, despite criticism from civil society
groups that have dubbed the bill 'the French Patriot Act'.”
“The
latest intelligence bill is one of several government reforms in the
wake of the January 7-9 Paris attacks that left 17 dead. France
remains on high alert and has received repeated threats from jihadist
groups, including the Islamic State (IS) group in the Syria-Iraq
region.”
“Rights
groups, however, have slammed the new proposals, calling the raft of
measures a 'French Big Brother'. Speaking to FRANCE 24 Tuesday Felix
Tréguer founder of La Quadrature du Net -- a Paris-based group
defending cyber rights -- warned that civil liberties were being
overlooked in the push for reforms following the January attacks.”
“Under
the bill, private residences can be monitored using geo-location
measures, mobile communications can be intercepted, and web usage and
communication can be monitored with the help of so-called 'black
boxes' attached to servers. Black boxes are complex algorithms that
Internet providers will be forced to install to flag up a pattern of
suspicious behaviour online and are among the most controversial of
the bill’s proposals.”
“A
poll published last month showed that nearly two-thirds of French
people were in favour of restricting freedoms in the name of fighting
extremism. Only 32 percent of those surveyed in the CSA poll for the
Atlantico news website said they were opposed to freedoms being
reduced*, although this proportion rose significantly among young
people. Civil rights activists say the measures are not aimed solely
at the prevention of terrorism but also will be used for foreign
policy, as well as economic and scientific interests.”
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* ... over the decades,
Western societies began to get used to the idea that interceptions
is a common practice of governments. After the attacks of
September 11 of 2001, things changed very quickly. Western
societies are "trained" not to be shocked by cases of
interceptions. Within the Western neo-rationalism, is included the
necessity of interceptions for security reasons.
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Some politicians like Bill
Clinton and George W. Bush adopted this perception later and tried
to establish Western-type democracies based on this concept of
Negative Liberty, maintaining also the "fundamentalism"
of the big, mostly American, corporations and banks. They applied
a massive violence in other countries (Iraq, Yugoslavia, Somalia,
etc.), bringing another bloodbath through a different way. At the
same time, they imposed progressively, new measures of repression
and restrictions of civil liberties in Western democracies in the
name of protection against terrorism, thus verifying Berlin's
warning.
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