Marseille edit
A black box is active in France. The information goes out of Francis Delon's mouth, the president of the national Committee of the information techniques control (CNCTR), on the occasion of a colloquium on the surveillance and the respect for the human rights preserved in Grenoble.
A controversial measure
Black boxes are tools allowing the information services to get a volume not defined by metadata (identifiers of connection, date and time of the message, its technical characteristics, data on consignee) on the Internet. The operation can take place at the level of the host, and the access provider of the site. The objective is to locate in this magma of data a behavior susceptible to reveal a terrorist threat thanks to the use of military secret classified algorithms.
Black boxes are a controversial measure of the law on the information voted in 2015. If this had been adopted in a very big majority, it would have made the object of very lively criticisms on behalf of the organizations defending personal freedoms and human rights. In fact, these black boxes can potentially lead to a mass surveillance of the French Internet and this made a priori judgment without control. In fact, the Prime Minister decides the appeal to this instrument. CNCTR intervenes but gives only a simple consultative opinion.
Slight decrease of the liberties on Web
Black boxes are typical flight deterioration of the liberties on the Net (libertés sur le net) which took place in France in the year followed in June, 2016, according to Freedom House. This announced a mark of 26 on a 0-100 scale in which 0 corresponds to the best appreciation: it was 25 in 2016, 20 in 2014. This mark depends particularly on obstacles to the Web access and the limitations in the contents.
Yet, the report notices a sharp rise in the requests of site blocking on behalf of French authorities (874 from March, 2016 to February, 2017, vs 312 at the same period in the previous year). The detail of these requests was not known and some were disputed by IT National Committee and Liberties (CNIL). Besides, we notice an increasing number of eliminated or de-indexed contents justified because of their link with the terrorism or the pedo-pornography. Even a handle of these measures were disputed by CNIL.
The study of Freedom House also returns on the emergency status and voted laws which penalize the apology of the on-line terrorism. A measure allowed in particular to condemn during two years of detention and 30,000 Euros to all people visiting frequently glorifying sites or inciting to terrorist acts unless these consultations are made by "good faith" concerning the journalism or the university research. The Constitutional Council censored this measure on the ground that the honest notion lacks the clarity and the law was not “necessary, adapted and proportioned". However, the consultation offence of terrorist sites returned under the features of an amended version. The conditions are the "usual" visit of these sites and the "demonstration of the membership in the ideology expressed in this service".
Moreover, the recent years have been marked by the debate on the right to privacy in France. For this reason, Google has been fined $ 112,000 by the CNIL for not having satisfied a request for this right. The firm of Mountain View challenged this decision before the Council of State which has itself referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Lastly, the limits on access to content were the result of false information that came out in the last presidential elections. The report indicates a "fake news deluge" with 30,000 accounts automatically created for this purpose. On May 5, 2017, candidate Emmanuel Macron's campaign was marked by a leak of confidential documents, some of which were mixed with incorrect information.
Article written by Thierry Randretsa