French lawmakers voted in favour Tuesday of a new law granting the state sweeping surveillance powers, despite criticism from civil society groups that have dubbed the bill the “French Patriot Act”. 
 
 The bill passed the National Assembly with 438 votes in favour and just 86 against after it gained the backing of the two main parties – the ruling Socialists and the centre-right UMP. The bill will now go up before the French parliament’s upper house, the Senate, in June. 
 
 The latest intelligence bill is one of several government reforms in the wake of the January 7-9 Paris attacks that left 17 dead. France remains on high alert and has received repeated threats from jihadist groups, including the Islamic State (IS) group in the Syria-Iraq region. 
 
 Rights groups, however, have slammed the new proposals, calling the raft of measures a “French Big Brother”. 
 
 Speaking to FRANCE 24 Tuesday, Felix Tréguer, founder of La Quadrature du Net -- a Paris-based group defending cyber rights --, warned that civil liberties were being overlooked in the push for reforms following the January attacks. 
 
 “The fact is the law was being prepared for a long time,” said Tréguer. “The bill’s advocates wanted a legal framework for the French intelligence agencies, which is a good thing. But the government is actually using the Paris attacks as an excuse for acting against terrorism, but the law is much broader than that. The range of motives that can be invoked to engage in intelligence collection include industrial and scientific espionage, monitoring social movements and so on.” 
 
 The authors of the bill, however, deny it will be used for mass surveillance and reject comparisons with the US Patriot Act passed a month after the September 11, 2001, attacks. 
 
 "We are not going for widespread monitoring because the US [case] has shown that to be useless,” said Jean-Jacques Urvoas, a Socialist Party MP. “This is not going to be run on a predictive basis, we simply aim to ensure enhanced monitoring of those identified as threats.” 
 
 In the ‘realm of the intelligence superpowers’ 
 
 Under the bill, private residences can be monitored using geo-location measures, mobile communications can be intercepted, and web usage and communication can be monitored with the help of so-called “black boxes” attached to servers. 
 
 Black boxes are complex algorithms that Internet providers will be forced to install to flag up a pattern of suspicious behaviour online and are among the most controversial of the bill’s proposals 
 
 A poll published last month showed that nearly two-thirds of French people were in favour of restricting freedoms in the name of fighting extremism. 
 
 Only 32 percent of those surveyed in the CSA poll for the Atlantico news website said they were opposed to freedoms being reduced, although this proportion rose significantly among young people. 
 
 Civil rights activists say the measures are not aimed solely at the prevention of terrorism but also will be used for foreign policy, as well as economic and scientific interests. 
 
 “The French intelligence agencies do not have the budget and financial means of the [USA’s] NSA (National Security Agency), but the logic behind some of the bill’s provisions perfectly mirrors what’s going on in the US and the UK in terms of the very broadly defined regime of international surveillance,” said Tréguer. “The bill is a way for France to retain its rank in the realm of the intelligence superpowers…the bill is a way of continuing the arms race in terms of accumulating new surveillance powers.” 
 
 French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, however, has fiercely defended the bill, saying that to compare it to the mass surveillance "Patriot Act" introduced in the United States after the 9/11 attacks was a "lie". 
 
 He has pointed out that the previous law on wiretapping dates back to 1991, "when there were no mobile phones or Internet," which makes the new bill crucial in the face of extremist threats. 
 
 (FRANCE 24 with AFP) 
 
 Date created : 2015-05-05 ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Hugh Schofield on France's new surveillance rules 
 
 The French parliament has approved a controversial law strengthening the intelligence services, with the aim of preventing Islamist attacks. 
 
 The law on intelligence-gathering, adopted by 438 votes to 86, was drafted after three days of attacks in Paris in January, in which 17 people died. 
 
 The Socialist government says the law is needed to take account of changes in communications technology. 
 
 But critics say it is a dangerous extension of mass surveillance. 
 
 They argue that it gives too much power to the state and threatens the independence of the digital economy. 
 
 Main provisions of the new law: 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption The government says it needs better surveillance to combat the terrorist threat 
 
 Define the purposes for which secret intelligence-gathering may be used 
 
 Set up a supervisory body, the National Commission for Control of Intelligence Techniques (CNCTR), with wider rules of operation 
 
 Authorise new methods, such as the bulk collection of metadata via internet providers 
 
 Surveillance law prompts unease in France 
 
 Paris attacks: Three days of terror 
 
 The government says it wants to bring modern surveillance techniques within the law rather than outside any system of control. 
 
 A new watchdog will oversee the intelligence services, which will have broader powers to look at classified material and handle complaints from the public. 
 
 But none of this has satisfied the critics, who range from civil liberties groups to major internet providers. 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption Protests against the new surveillance measures have been held in Paris 
 
 Their main worry is the way French intelligence agencies will be able to collect massive amounts of metadata from the internet - the detail of communications such as times and places rather than content. 
 
 Critics say this amounts to a mass intrusion of privacy, which in the hands of an unscrupulous government could have worrying consequences. 
 
 Apart from some dissident voices, both the governing Socialists and opposition centre-right were in favour. 
 
 One online advocacy group, La Quadrature du Net, wrote after the vote: "Representatives of the French people have given the Prime Minister the power to undertake massive and limitless surveillance of the population. 
 
 "By doing so, they're ensuring that the power of the state and the basis of our democratic system are getting ever more distant from one another." 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption Those opposed to the proposed new law say that it will allow the government to keep a record of innocuous conversations 
 
 Analysis by Hugh Schofield, BBC, Paris 
 
 It has been an unusual debate. Many in the Socialist Party who would normally have spoken out against the new powers have instead kept quiet. In the wake of the January attacks, there is little political mileage in raising doubts about the intelligence services. 
 
 Meanwhile on the right, with its clearer law-and-order tradition, most MPs support the Socialist bill. But some are opposed on points of principle. Irony of ironies, some of the harshest criticism has come from the Front National. 
 
 The consensus means that the powerful civil liberties arguments have had little of an airing in the National Assembly. In some sessions there were no more than a handful of deputies in attendance. 
 
 But the opposition from outside the chamber has been vocal. Not necessarily from the public at large (who by and large sympathise with the government's argument) but from rights groups, the press, and Internet companies. 
 
 Surveillance law prompts unease in France
– See if this sounds familiar: A nation reeling from a major terror attack puts into place sweeping new surveillance rules in the name of public safety that critics think violate civil liberties. A measure with the nickname the "French Patriot Act" cleared the lower house of Parliament in France today, reports France24. The legislation now goes to the Senate, where it seems likely to pass, reports the New York Times, which provides some specifics: The provisions would let intelligence services "tap cellphones, read emails and force Internet providers to comply with government requests to sift through virtually all of their subscribers’ communications." Advocates insist the monitoring would be directed at suspected terrorists, but critics don't buy it. A nine-person committee set up to oversee the surveillance would have only an advisory role and could not overrule the prime minister. The measure "shows a number of tactics that seem cribbed from the NSA, including bulk collection of internet metadata, which would allow the government to track French citizens from site to site," notes a post at the Verge. The legislation also allows intelligence services to put microphones in a room or on objects to record conversations, and to use other devices to intercept phone conversations and text messages. The French debate follows the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices, and "many in the Socialist Party who would normally have spoken out against the new powers have instead kept quiet," observes the BBC. "In the wake of the January attacks, there is little political mileage in raising doubts about the intelligence services." (In the US, things seem to be moving in the opposite direction.)