Patching the French Intelligence Bill
INTRODUCTION
The Intelligence Bill introduced before the French Council of Ministers on 19 March 2015 is presented by its defenders as a text which protects fundamental rights. This technical text would be nothing more than a way to legalise policies and techniques which were up to now common but not regulated, and as such to create better safeguards. Move along, nothing to see here!
As the French government has chosen to burry its head in the sand since the beginning of Edward Snowden's revelations regarding the NSA and GCHQ spying methods, this argument might be used as a successful public relations strategy. For nearly two years, the French government has indeed managed to avoid any actual debate on the French services' practices, altough some of the revelations have shed light on the DGSE (French foreign intelligence agency) and the exchange of data with the NSA. Instead of a transparent democratic debate, French officials have mostly weathered the storm, simply issuing denials without ever explaining how the French system works.
This bill would as such help render the process as clean as it gets. For Prime Minister Manuel Valls, the text would even forbid mass surveillance! The underlying message being pushed here is that the French system would be defined in opposition to the American and British surveillance schemes.
But the argument doesn't hold once the text is examined in detail one looks at the text in detail. Several provisions are actually directly inspired by the law and the methods used by the NSA and GCHQ and do indeed legalize tools of mass surveillance (in particular with automated Internet trafic analysis "black boxes" designed to detect “suspicious behaviour” (art. L. 851-4) or provisions on so-called 'international surveillance'
(art. L. 854-1) which will authorize bulk data collection). The will to set loose thhacking and cyberattacks carried beyond French borders also echoes the recent revelations regarding the British, US and Canadian agencies' practices. Finally, despite what its champions claim, the text is in many ways a step backwards in relation to the existing law and practices: for instance, specific and crucial control processes currently carried out by the CNCIS (National Commission for the Control of Security Interceptions) are being dismantled, whereas the field of intervention of intelligence agencies is widely extended.
Only the citizens' mobilisation, in France and across the world, can make a change whilst the the government tries to force this bill through. In actual fact, the Valls-Urvoas (Prime Minister and the Bill's rapporteur) tandem in the National Assembly will enable the government and its majority to join forces during an rushed legislative procedure, while the "post-Charlie" mood and the securitarian drift by the opposition conservative party (the UMP) might contribute to stifling the democratic and parliamentary debates.
The points raised below highlight the dangers of the bill while pointing at possible amendments. To be acceptable and allow intelligence agencies to do their work while respecting the rule of law, the text must indeed be deeply amended.
