French law enforcement may soon add another tool to its belt. On Wednesday, July 5th, France’s Parliament, the National Assembly, passed a bill that lets police remotely access suspects’ cameras, microphones, and GPS location systems on phones and other devices.
According to Le Monde, a judge will have to approve the use of the spying powers outlined in Article 3, part of a wider justice reform bill, which forbids use against “protected” professions, such as journalists, lawyers, and, of course, members of parliament.
80 MPs from French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance (RE), Les Républicains (LR), and Rassemblement National (RN) approved the draft’s key article.
23 MPs from NUPEs (Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociale) voted against, as did the chairman of the Libertés, Indépendants, Outre-Mer et Territoires (LIOT) group, Bertrand Pancher.
A safeguard, inserted during Wednesday’s debate, states that any capture of data is to be reserved for “serious cases” only, with the period set at a six-month maximum.
Geolocation (pinpointing a person’s location) would also be limited to those suspected of crimes that carry a prison sentence of three years minimum.
While an earlier version of the bill had already passed the Senate, another amendment requires that body’s approval before it is enshrined into law.
Across the left-right political spectrum, the bill has received its fair share of criticism. Starkly reminded of the Patriot Act which granted U.S. authorities similar powers under the guise of fighting terrorism, civil rights groups are ringing the alarm bell.
As recently as late May, the digital rights group La Quadrature du Net had warned of the potential for abuse. The provisions “raise serious concerns over infringements of fundamental liberties,” it then noted. Citing the “right to security, right to a private life and to private correspondence” and “the right to come and go freely,” it went on to label it a “slide into heavy-handed security.”
The Paris Bar Association, the body of lawyers representing the Paris judicial court, similarly decries the bill’s controversial Article 3.
“This new possibility of remotely activating any electronic device, including the cell phone of any person in any place, constitutes a particularly serious breach of privacy that cannot be justified by the protection of public order. In addition, the draft law does not prohibit listening to conversations between lawyers and their clients, even if transcription is prohibited. This is an inadmissible infringement on professional secrecy and the rights of the defense,” it said, adding that these provisions were “contrary to the Constitution, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.”
Yet Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti says such powers would be invoked in “dozens” of cases annually. The emergence of a surveillance state as described in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, he added, was a “far-off” prospect, stressing the bill would “save lives.”
