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French lawmakers agreed to a justice reform bill that includes a clause that gives police the power to obtain the geolocation of suspects through phones and other devices. This bill is being pushed at a time when much of France is mired in the controversy of a police officer receiving widespread support in the country, including financial, after a teenager of Algerian descent was killed when failing to stop at a traffic check.
French media highlighted that the spying permit was attacked by both the Left and the Right as an “authoritative letter from eavesdroppers. However, Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti insisted that this would only affect “dozens of cases a year.”
According to Le Monde, lawmakers approved on July 5 for French police to spy on suspects under investigation by remotely activating the camera, microphone and GPS of their phones and other devices. The measure would also allow the geolocation of suspects of crimes punishable by at least five years in prison and would cover devices such as laptops, cars and other objects connected to the internet, such as phones.
A French group that works in favour of digital rights, La Quadrature du Net (LQDN), said in a statement that the provisions “raise serious concerns about violations of fundamental freedoms” such as the “right to security, right to private life and private correspondence” and “the right to come and go freely.”
During a debate on July 5, parliamentarians from President Emmanuel Macron’s base inserted an amendment limiting the use of remote spying “when justified by the nature and seriousness of the crime” and “for a strictly proportionate duration.” However, any use of the device must be approved by a judge, and the total duration of surveillance cannot exceed six months. Those in sensitive professions, including doctors, journalists, lawyers, judges, and parliamentarians, would not be legitimate targets.
“We’re far away from the totalitarianism of ‘1984’, George Orwell’s novel about a society under total surveillance,” Dupond-Moretti said. “People’s lives will be saved [by the law].”
France has been gripped by rioting, anarchy and near civil-war-like conditions since 17-year-old Nahel, of Algerian descent, was shot dead by a police officer after failing to stop at a traffic check in Paris on June 25. And rather than deal with the root causes of the violence that led to more than 3,000 people being detained since Nahel’s death, as well as hundreds of police and firefighters being injured in the violence, the Macron government has instead taken full advantage to impose draconian and liberty-threatening measures against French citizens.
Controversially, over €1 million has been raised for the family of the French police officer who shot dead Nahel. Chiming into the discussion, MP Eric Bothorel of Macron’s ruling party called the fundraiser “indecent and scandalous” and said its organiser “is playing with fire.” For his part, Dupond-Moretti said the fundraiser was “fuelling the fire” of unrest and lambasted it as a populist “instrumentalisation” of the teenager’s death.
The Macron government also uses the fundraiser controversy to hide recent news that weapons supplied by the West to Ukraine are being used by rioters in France. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova described this phenomenon on July 6 as a “boomerang.”
“Weapons, supplied to Kiev, are in the hands of these demonstrators and are used against police in France,” Zakharova said. “The same weapons that the West, NATO and France provide, the same money that they pour in support of nationalists, Nazis and fascists in Ukraine boomerang and not only end up on their own territory, but are being fired at their own people.”
“Weapons, shipped to Kiev, end up in the hands of these protesters and are being used against the police back in France,” she added.
At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post that some of the weapons Western countries have been supplying Ukraine are already on Israel’s borders, and Tel Aviv fears that any supplies of weapons systems to Ukraine could end up in enemy hands, such as Iran.
Again, this provides insight into how reckless Paris’ policy has been towards Ukraine. Not only has their obsession meant that they lost sight of the situation domestically, but now even the very weapons they sent to kill Russians are now being used to target French security personnel or are a source of concern for French allies, such as Israel.
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Featured image is from InfoBrics
