Directive Terrorisme/en : Différence entre versions

De La Quadrature du Net
Aller à la navigationAller à la recherche
(Page créée avec « But the report recommends to encourage Member States to "'' consider instituting legal action, including criminal prosecutions, against companies active in the field of In... »)
Ligne 43 : Ligne 43 :
 
** the list of blocked addresses is kept a secret and neither Internet users nor the persons directly concerned by the block are informed
 
** the list of blocked addresses is kept a secret and neither Internet users nor the persons directly concerned by the block are informed
 
** the blocking procedure and the motives that may lead to blocking a website are nowhere specified.
 
** the blocking procedure and the motives that may lead to blocking a website are nowhere specified.
* The Goverment is setting up an illegal processing of personal data, since the data transmitted through the redirection notably comprises the IP address <ref>Should an IP address be considered a personal information? This question has never been definitely answered and was asked to the Court of Justice of the European Union in the context of the case [http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=178241&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=810242 C-582/14 Breyer c. Bundesrepublik Deutschland].
+
* The Goverment is setting up an illegal processing of personal data, since the data transmitted through the redirection notably comprises the IP address <ref>Should an IP address be considered a personal information? This question has never been definitely answered and was asked to the Court of Justice of the European Union in the context of the case [http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=178241&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=810242 C-582/14 Breyer c. Bundesrepublik Deutschland].</ref>
  
 
Considering the whole of these remarks, the amendments appear as an unacceptable attack against freedom of expression and freedom of information as laid down in Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. They should at least be amended to put back a judicial judge back into the core of the process, in order to stop any censorship through private or administrative means.
 
Considering the whole of these remarks, the amendments appear as an unacceptable attack against freedom of expression and freedom of information as laid down in Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. They should at least be amended to put back a judicial judge back into the core of the process, in order to stop any censorship through private or administrative means.

Version du 31 mai 2016 à 11:38


Ambox warning red construction.png
⚠ Travail en cours

Cette page présente un contenu en cours de réalisation.

Si vous souhaitez participer, n'hésitez pas à laisser votre avis sur la page de discussion en suivant au mieux ces recommandations.


Autres langues :
English • ‎français

See the legislative folder on the website of the European Parliament.

Introduction

The directive on combatting terrorism has been tabled by the European Commission after the terrorist attacks that took place in Europe in 2014 and 2015, in particular after the Paris attacks on 13 November. This directive aims at replacing the framework decision of 13 June 2002 on fighting terrorism. However, this project does not feature much new material, except for penalisation of travels in regions were terror operations take place and apology of terrorism.

Beside definition of terrorist infractions, the project includes a number of measures, for example turning certain terrorist activities into criminal offences.

  • Apology of terrorism and "when committed intentionally, diffusion or publication in any other form of a message, with the intention to incite to committing" terrorist actions (article 5). However, this proposal is extremely blurry and the criteria of intention cannot sufficiently protect a person sharing messages considered as encouraging terrorist offences for information or liberty reasons.
  • Travels abroad for terrorism purposes, "when committed deliberately, going to another country in order to commit terrorist offences". Again, this infraction is extremely wide and blurry.

This draft Directive will be discussed in the LIBE commission of the European Parliament on 3 May 2016 and will then go to plenary[1].

Hohlmeier Report

On 9 March, the rapporteur, Monika Hohlmeier (EPP[2], Germany) presented her report including numerous amendments, some of which are very plainly geared towards Internet censorship.

Net censorship and blocking websites

Monika Hohlmeier tabled several amendments aiming at strengthening online repression and censorship, by focusing only on the use of the Internet by "fanatics worldwide" [Amendment 3] and on the difficulty to trace their online activity, thus justifying Member States cooperation in the detection and the deletion of illegal content such as those "[making] glorification and apology of terrorism, or dissemination of messages or images, including those related to victims of terrorism, used to propagate the terrorist cause". [Amendment 6]

Amendment 6 modifying recital 7 and amendment 40 introducing a new article 14bis on "webpages publicly inciting to committing terrorist offences", in order to "remove" or "block access" to "webpages publicly inciting to committing terrorist offences" [Amendment 6]. However, these amendments leave a large leeway for Member States to enforce any measures that they will seem appropriate, as long as the procedures are " transparent procedures and provide adequate safeguards, in particular to ensure that the restriction is limited to what is necessary and proportionate" [Amendments 6 and 40].

Monika Hohlmeier's safeguards do not protect against extra-judiciary repression of online content. The provisions advocated for by the German rapporteur seem tailored to fit the censorship measures that France has put in place, as to validate them at the European level, and specifically:

  • one the one hand, the ability to require that online services (such as social networks and other hosts) monitor their users' communications in order to censor content;
  • on the other hand, the ability for governments to require that ISPs block the websites on which such content would be published.

This measure would allow for extending private censorship and to trivialise administrative censorship, as France has done, by bypassing judicial control under the guise of avoiding the purported impediments of judiciary red-tape. However, considering the difficulty of judging what falls within glorification or apology of terrorism, the delegation of judiciary functions to private or administrative actors goes against the protection of fundamental rights.

Website blocking - tabled without the slightest impact study - shows itself to be a disproportionate freedom-limiting measure on communication. Considering that the blocking are very easily bypassed, these measures are no long-term solution against glorification and apology of terrorism. A number of technical means can be used to make distribution and diffusion of websites possible, notwithstanding that the actual impact on incitations to terrorism remains uncertain. A well-known method consists in setting up an encrypted tunnel, the so-called "proxy", that is a piece of software placed between a client and a server that allow two host computers to communicate with each other without transmissions ever reaching the actual server and being traceable. Furthermore, the inevitable risk of blocking perfectly legitimate content makes website blocking even more disproportionate.

Furthermore, experience from France shows the limits of this system. The person in charge authorised by CNIL to control blocking measures has published his activity report in April 2016.

  • Article 6-1 of LCEN provides for content hosts and editors to be notified of the removal notice beforehand, with a 24-hour margin to remove the litigious content. However, the person in charge clearly indicates that this measure is bypassed without justification under the pretext that "in practice, editors and hosts are almost never identified". This constitutes a breach of law that attacks the rights of content hosts and editors who might have been notified but were not, without justification.
  • The person in charge insists on the utmost difficulty to judge whether content "making an apology of terrorist actions or inciting to such actions" are illegal or not, which considerably reinforces the absolute need to recommand a judiciary process.
  • The number of requests for blocking website with terrorist content amounted to 68 for 2015, which is a very low number
  • The State of Emergency law, modified by the law of 20 November 2015, allows the Interior Minister to take "any measures to ensure interruption of any online public communication service that incites to committing terrorist actions or makes apologies of these" during the state of emergency. However, at the publication of the report, the Minister of the Interior had never used this disposition.

On the other hand, the French example provides interesting insights on the blattant lack of transparency of the blocking procedure. The law only provides for the block as such. However, the French government has set up a redirection of requests for blocked pages towards a webpage hosted by the Ministry of the Interior, explaining the reasons for the block. As the Exégètes Amateurs state in their appeal to the Council of State against that measure, this "automated redirection of Internet users to a Ministry of the Interior webpage constitutes an infringement on freedom of communication and on secrecy of correspondence that is not provided for in the law, as well as a violation of the dispositions of the law of 6 January 1978 on Computing, files and liberties." Thus, the lack of a judiciary process to guarantee transparency and respect of fundamental liberties has allowed the Government to set up an opaque procedure that infringes on liberties.

  • The lack of transparency is blatant, as
    • neither the author, host or reader of the web page know what the charges are, what content is considered litigious on the blocked website, and none has any means to know the motivations for the block or the advancement of the procedure that led the administration to blocking the website
    • the list of blocked addresses is kept a secret and neither Internet users nor the persons directly concerned by the block are informed
    • the blocking procedure and the motives that may lead to blocking a website are nowhere specified.
  • The Goverment is setting up an illegal processing of personal data, since the data transmitted through the redirection notably comprises the IP address [3]

Considering the whole of these remarks, the amendments appear as an unacceptable attack against freedom of expression and freedom of information as laid down in Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. They should at least be amended to put back a judicial judge back into the core of the process, in order to stop any censorship through private or administrative means.

Search of electronic evidences

The question of electronic evidences is vague in the report made by the Rapporteur Monika Hohlmeier, mostly through the amendments 19 and 20 (creating recitals 15 sexties and 15 septies). It is about coordination of States, through Eurojust especially, by "the collecting, sharing and admissibility of electronic evidences". But the amendment 20 point clearly the "anonymizers, proxy servers, Tor network [...]" and storage in remote servers ("in the cloud"). The amendment specifies that Member States "

Between the lines, the will of the rapporteur and states like France that support this measure is twofold: to address the issue of encryption and to increase dramatically the means of police investigation.

Encryption

Encryption tools and the development of technology under the concept of "privacy by design" are tools that allow individuals and companies to protect their communications. It is about the appropriation by individuals of the "right to privacy" and the "right to the secrecy of correspondences". These rights have a particular meaning considering the mass surveillance carried out by some States and the collection and processing of personal data by private companies. It is also used by companies to secure their activities, communications and transactions. Weakening encryption and "privacy by design" technologies by imposing device and software manufacturers to voluntarily introduce flaws (or "backdoors"), carries an unnecessary and disproportionate infringement of the right to privacy, breaks the confidence of users in the software and the hardware, and reduces firms' innovation capabilities.

Many actors, from Telecoms, government, police, Erreur de référence : Balise fermante </ref> manquante pour la balise <ref> Europol [4] clearly stance against backdoors that will weaken intrinsically protections for all users against criminals.

The trend of some States is to bypass the issue of encryption by legislative means. In France, the Criminal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code and the Internal Security Code allow:

  • to drastically increase the sentences for violations committed using an encryption tool [Article 132-79 of the Penal Code],
  • the police to request from any person "having knowledge of measures applied to protect data" informations granting the access to the data [Art. 57-1 Code of Penal Procedure],
  • to designate during an investigation or instruction "any legal person qualified to perform the technical operations to obtain the access to this information, the version in clear and, where a mean of encryption was used, the secret decryption agreement if necessary "[Article 230-1 of the criminal procedure code],
  • to punish of three years of imprisonment and of a 45,000 euro fine the refusal to hand over to the judicial authorities of a secret encryption agreement that would have been used to prepare, facilitate or commit a crime or an offence [Article 434-15- 2 of the criminal code]. This penalty is increased to 270 000 in the bill against organized crime and terrorism currently in discussion,
  • to require from cryptology manufacturers to hand in "within seventy-two hours" decryption keys [Article L871-1 of the Code of Interior Security],
  • through the article 4 paragraph 6 of the bill against organized crime and terrorism, allows sealed to be open for "clearing up operations".

This legislative framework is in many ways at odds with the right to remain silent and right to the presumption of innocence (and therefore not to incriminate oneself), thus infringing the rights protected by Articles 6 (right to security) and 48 (presumption of innocence and respect for the rights of defence) of the [http : //www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/pdf/text_fr.pdf Charter of fundamental rights]. It would therefore be particularly dangerous to extend the powers of the administrative and judicial authorities in France and transpose them in other countries. The technical and legislative means used to access the encrypted data and devices must not reduce the scope of fundamental rights, nor jeopardize the freedom to use encryption tools,to protect the privacy and confidentiality of communications for instance.

Police investigative powers

The search for electronic evidence may also go through a sharp increase in police investigation methods with extremely broad powers, notably by extending remote access to computers without any warning to those affected. This can include both interception of communications, but especially actual remote search of specified computers.

While search systems are relatively framed and need to have, in France for example, the person's authorization - or in investigations of flagrante delicto his (or her) presence or the presence of witnesses, the remote searches are totally disproportionate and do not allow the preservation the fundamental rights protected by the Charter of fundamental rights of the European Union: right to respect for private and family life (Article 7), right to security (article 6), freedom of expression and information (Article 11), right to an effective judicial redress (Article 47) and defence (Article 48).

Corporate criminal responsibility

In November 2015, the European Parliament voted a report presented by Rachida Dati on the prevention of radicalization and recruitment of EU citizens by terrorist organizations. The report places particular emphasis on the responsibility of corporations " active in the field of the Internet and social networks and Internet service providers " in the fight against terrorism.

But the report recommends to encourage Member States to " consider instituting legal action, including criminal prosecutions, against companies active in the field of Internet and social networks and suppliers of Internet services who refuse to comply with an administrative or judicial request to delete illegal content or content glorifying terrorism on their online platforms ". According to the report, " refusal to cooperate or lack of deliberate cooperation by these online platforms on which such illegal content can therefore move freely, should be viewed as an act of complicity can be considered as a criminal intent or negligence, and [...] it is appropriate in this case, that those responsible are brought to justice "[Paragraph 16].

Ces dispositions sont dangereuses et visent à rendre responsables les plateformes et hébergeurs de la diffusion de messages faisant l'apologie du terrorisme, entraînant donc de forts risques de censure préventive de leur part. De telles dispositions mettent gravement en danger la liberté d'expression des Européens.

La tentative est grande d'amplifier le phénomène visant à donner aux hébergeurs et plateformes, vecteurs d'expression les plus utilisés par les internautes, un pouvoir quasi-judiciaire, en les obligeant à définir eux-mêmes la légalité des contenus qu'ils hébergent. Mais le simple fait de les obliger à coopérer à des décisions de police administrative, qui contournent le pouvoir judiciaire, pour supprimer les contenus considérés comme illégaux par la police ou l'administration est dangereux, en ce que cela remet en cause le principe de séparation des pouvoirs, l'un des piliers de nos démocraties. Le pouvoir judiciaire - et notamment le pouvoir de censure - ne doit pas être écarté au profit du pouvoir exécutif, et doit encore moins être étendu à des entreprises privées.

Les amendements de compromis proposés par la rapporteur Monika Hohlmeier ont pourtant vocation à insérer ces dispositions dans la directive pour combattre le terrorisme. Une fois de plus cette directive va donc dans le mauvais sens en renforçant l'arsenal sécuritaire et en ouvrant une porte béante à la censure administrative et à la censure préventive des contenus, portant par conséquent des atteintes graves à la liberté d'expression et au droit à l'information.

Il est fondamental de remettre les droits fondamentaux au cœur du projet européen, de renforcer considérablement les fondements de nos démocraties et notamment la séparation des pouvoirs qui, seule, via ses mécanismes de contre-pouvoirs, peut permettre de trouver l'équilibre nécessaire dans un État de droit.

Étude d'impact

La Commission européenne prévoit que des études d'impact doivent être élaborées, afin d'étudier la nécessité d'une action au niveau de l'Union européenne, ainsi que les conséquences économiques, sociales et environnementales d'une telle action, lorsque les initiatives de la Commission sont susceptibles d'avoir d'importantes incidences sur le plan économique, social ou environnemental.

La Commission donne même des lignes directrices pour l'élaboration des études d'impact avec notamment :

  • une consultation publique de 12 semaines
  • une description claire de qui sera affecté par l'initiative

Une directive pour combattre le terrorisme aura des incidences très fortes sur les droits et libertés des européens et pourtant la Commission européenne n'a pas jugé nécessaire de prendre le temps de réfléchir à l'impact d'une telle réglementation, alors que dans plusieurs pays de l'Union européenne des lois extrêmement attentatoires aux droits et libertés sont adoptées ou sont en voie d'adoption, au nom de la lutte contre le terrorisme.

Il est plus qu'urgent qu'une réflexion profonde soit menées non seulement par les États membres, mais aussi par les institutions européennes, sur les conséquences de l'élaboration de lois sécuritaires, avec des bilans et analyses des lois existantes, de leur nécessité, proportionnalité et de leur efficacité.

Notes

  1. The vote in plenary could take place during the month of June 2016
  2. European People's Party that notably includes the French "Les Républicains" party
  3. Should an IP address be considered a personal information? This question has never been definitely answered and was asked to the Court of Justice of the European Union in the context of the case C-582/14 Breyer c. Bundesrepublik Deutschland.
  4. European Union's law enforcement agency