France seeks more support from tech firms to track terror threats

PanARMENIAN.Net - France is seeking greater assistance from technology firms as part of a plan to beef up domestic surveillance and add to its already heavy legal arsenal to track terror threats in the wake of last week’s deadly attacks, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Tuesday, Jan 13, said France would soon propose a new surveillance law aimed at giving intelligence services “all the legal means to accomplish their mission.” Valls said the country would also reinforce domestic intelligence services, boosting staff levels to track a growing number of potential terrorists.

“We have to focus on the Internet and social networks, which are more than ever used to recruit, organize and disseminate technical knowhow to commit terrorist acts,” Valls said in an address to parliament that was met at times with standing ovations. “We must go further.”

France’s moves to tighten surveillance since the Paris attacks add to pressure on U.S. tech firms in Europe to do more to help authorities combat terrorism. Particularly in the UK and France, security and intelligence officials have expressed frustration at what they say is some firms’ reluctance to comply with orders requesting information about users and their communications.

In recent months, European Union officials and national governments have met with companies including Google Inc., Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. to discuss the topic. A meeting Sunday of 11 EU interior ministers in Paris called on major Internet providers to swiftly report and remove material that could “incite hatred and terror.”

Technology companies, keen to assure users that they safeguard their privacy, have pushed back on some requests to turn over user data. They also cite conflicts with U.S. laws that they say prohibit them from sharing data.

“This has been a point of tension with EU governments,” one U.S. tech executive said, according to the Journal.

France had been amping up its surveillance powers even before the three-day spree of violence in Paris. To combat homegrown terrorists, a new law passed late last year makes it easier for the country to classify someone as a surveillance target. Another law that went into effect this year expands the government’s ability to demand real-time access to so-called metadata about Internet users and phone subscribers without traditional judicial review.