France wants telecom, tech firms to inform on potential terrorists

PanARMENIAN.Net - France wants telecom and tech firms to inform on potential terrorists, the Wall Street Journal reports.

A new surveillance bill to be unveiled on Thursday, March 19, would give the French government power to force communications companies to sift through mountains of phone and Internet metadata using automated tools to flag potential terrorist behavior to police, government officials say, raising concern among technology firms and civil liberties groups.

The proposed law, which was accelerated in the wake of the January shootings in the Paris area, would completely overhaul what officials say is an outdated legal framework for spycraft, echoing efforts in the U.S. to upgrade surveillance powers after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

It would authorize French intelligence services to use an array of high-tech tools in their search for terrorists and criminals without judicial oversight, including location trackers for cars and devices that can determine the identity of nearby mobile phones, the officials said.

If approved, the law could also force communications firms—potentially including U.S. technology companies—to give intelligence services real-time access to connection data of people suspected of involvement with terrorist groups.

While the government aims first to apply the law to French telecommunications companies, French officials said the law equally applies to U.S. tech firms with users in France, and the goal is to secure those companies’ cooperation, too.

“We need new measures to handle new threats,” a government official involved in drafting the bill said, according to the Journal.

Last month, French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve traveled to San Francisco to meet with Google Inc., Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Apple Inc., and pressed them to decrypt users’ communications for intelligence services and to turn over more information directly to French intelligence.

“We’re trying to set up a dialogue in the sector of new technologies,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Wednesday. “That cooperation should move forward as well with the big American companies.”

U.S. tech-company executives, for their part, say they already cooperate extensively with European law enforcement and that in emergencies like the Paris attacks they can turn over large amounts of information. But some executives also say U.S. law limits what they can turn over directly to foreign governments, arguing some requests must be handled via treaties with the U.S.

The government argues that the new law is necessary in part to give a legal framework to intelligence work in France, including putting limits on how it is applied, saying it will empower an independent oversight commission to keep intelligence services in check.

In the past, French intelligence had used some of the techniques the new law authorized, such as installing spyware on targets’ computers, even if they were technically illegal, officials said.

“This law helps protect citizens’ rights,” the government official said. “There won’t be any more gray areas.”