A plan that would enable police to monitor suspects by remotely activating the camera, microphone, and GPS of mobile phones and other digital devices has been approved by lawmakers in the National Assembly of France. A judge must authorize this provision, and it cannot be used against those in delicate professions like doctors, journalists, attorneys, judges, and members of parliament.
The camera, microphone, and GPS of suspects’ phones and other gadgets should be remotely activated so that police in France can spy on them, lawmakers decided late on July 5th. The surveillance clause, which is part of a larger court reform bill, has come under fire from the left and human rights activists as an authoritarian snoopers’ charter, although court Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti maintains that it would only apply to “dozens of cases a year.”
The law would permit the geolocation of suspects in crimes that carry a minimum five-year prison sentence, and it would apply to phones, laptops, automobiles, and other linked objects in addition to wireless devices. Additionally, devices could be remotely activated to record audio and video of suspects in terrorism-related crimes, organized crime, and delinquency.
The clauses “raise serious concerns over infringements of fundamental liberties,” said a statement from the digital rights organization La Quadrature du Net in May. The idea was described as a “slide into heavy-handed security” and referenced the “right to security, right to a private life and to private correspondence” as well as “the right to come and go freely.”
MPs supporting President Emmanuel Macron introduced an amendment during a discussion on Wednesday that would restrict the use of remote espionage to “when justified by the nature and seriousness of the crime” and “for a strictly proportional duration.” The overall duration of the surveillance may be at most six months, and any application of the provision must be allowed by a judge. Doctors, journalists, attorneys, judges, and other delicate professions would not be acceptable 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, he added.
Members of the Assemblée Nationale approved the contentious clause as a part of an article that contained a number of other measures as part of a larger justice reform package being debated in the legislature.
