French police can remotely spy on people suspected of serious crimes – punishable by at least five years in prison – using geolocation data from cameras, microphones and other devices such as their mobile phones or laptops.
The potential is contained in a justice reform package discussed last week and approved on Wednesday. Representatives from the department of the president, Emmanuel Macron, made an amendment so that the use of remote surveillance would be limited to cases “justified by the nature and seriousness of the crime” and would be “strictly proportionate within a certain period”, the French newspaper quoted the French daily as saying. Le Monde.
Supervision must be approved by a judge and the total duration must not exceed six months. People who work in professions considered sensitive, such as the judiciary, law, medicine or journalism, cannot be the target of this type of surveillance.
The prospect has drawn opposition from the left and right of government and from privacy groups. The organization La Quadrature du Net said in May that such a proposal “raises serious questions about the violation of fundamental freedoms”, listing the “right to security, privacy and the right to private correspondence”, characterizing the proposal as a “security initiative”. .
Justice Minister Eric DuPont-Moretti said the surveillance would only be used in a few “dozens of cases a year”. The official said the surveillance was already being used by the secret services and would not require a judge’s authorization in this case.
“We are far from a dictatorship 1984”, the minister added, a book by George Orwell about a society under the total surveillance of a totalitarian regime. “Lives will be saved” through this law, he maintained.
The organization La Quadrature du Net, which fears the potential for abuse, said the law is unclear about what constitutes a serious crime — which would open the door to using the surveillance against climate activists, for example, according to the cited report. Blog T engadget Technology.
oh site A 2002 report by the New Atlas Technology Institute found that nearly every one of the 50 countries surveyed had security forces with some sort of access. Smartphones and your data.
The position was different, as well as requiring recognition. China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates allowed wider access. In China, you don’t need to suspect anything.
The most surprising events New Atlas mentions will be in Germany, where intelligence agencies can access and establish. Software Spy on an unsuspecting person’s phone and Australia allows police to change data on a suspect’s phone.
The United States, for its part, requires mandates most of the time, but there are several exceptions.
All this happens when cases are used in many European countries Software Espionage is used to monitor journalists, opposition politicians or activists – in Hungary, Poland, Spain, France and Greece. Software Israeli Pegasus.
The European Parliament last year created a commission of inquiry, the seventh established since 1992, to investigate possible violations of European law by countries that have used Pegasus to spy on rights activists, humans or opposition parties. , journalists or politicians.
Before that, the European data protection watchdog also called for a ban on the use of the Pegasus program, arguing it was an “unprecedented level of intrusion” and “capable of interfering with the most intimate aspects of our daily lives”.
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