The new France Surveillance bill is disastrous and it just got approved on 5th May 2015. The move by the politicians is absolutely disgusting and is aimed at destroying the basic rights of the human race. The superficial reason given is the “Charlie Hebdo attack”. It shows how the government takes advantage of the situation to make an opportunistic law. Why do I say that? Because the attackers of Charlie Hebdo were already under surveillance with existing powers, this was just a simple power grab. Here’s a quote from the editor in chief of Charlie Hebdo:
I think that opportunistic laws are always bad laws,
– Gérard Biard
This newly approved bill will grant intelligence services the right to gather potentially unlimited electronic data from Internet communications, phone calls and text messages. Not to forget, it also allows intelligence agencies to do all these spying without seeking permission from a judge. Surprised? You shouldn’t be since NSA, GCHQ, etc are all doing those stupid tax-wasting actions.
Anyone who is suspected or probably associated with terrorism can have their communications monitored, regardless of whether they are implicated in potentially illegal acts. Again, just a reminder that no authorisation from judge is required. Cameras, audio or video recording devices and keylogger devices are all allowed in private homes and recordings can be kept for a month while its metadata can be kept for up to 5 years. All your passwords will no longer be secrets, all your secrets will no longer be yours, all your actions will be monitored – as long as they THINK you might be a terrorist.
They have also setup a system named “black boxes”, something extremely similar to NSA’s PRISM program. So if your ISP is working with the France secret service, your online behavioural patterns will be tracked – keywords used, sites visited and contacts made. If you trigger the complex algorithms with your online activity, you will be marked as a suspected terrorist. Imagine – you have a project on making chemical reactions and you used Google to search for “how to make bombs” and you accidentally forgotten to type in the word “soda” before the word “bomb”, congratulations, you’re now on the list. There is no guarantee that these algorithms will even help track real terrorists and it is more likely to get more innocent civilians have their privacy invaded.
In conclusion, this is a complete waste of tax payer’s money. The speeches by the ministers are half-truths, how bad can that get? These crook ministers claims that “it is targeted surveillance” but that’s just rubbish – it is completely illegal mass surveillance. No court orders required – “I think you’re a terrorist and therefore you are one, don’t ask why because I just think so, hence, I’ll just use the tax payer’s money to spy on you.” This opportunistic law is so broken but somehow managed to get passed. Most importantly, the people of France has lost their liberty through this law.
