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French Version of 'Patriot Act' Becomes Law
Taco Cowboy writes: Thanks to the Charlie Hebdo massacre and other instances of terrorism, the French legislature has voted 438 to 86 in favor of the "Intelligence Service Bill," essentially a French version of the Patriot Act. It awards the French intelligence services sweeping powers to tap and intercept any kind of digital correspondence, including phone conversations, emails, and social media.
The bill decrees that hosting providers and Internet service providers in France must be equipped with a "black box" that can retain all digital communications from customers. "The new law would create a 13-member National Commission to Control Intelligence Techniques, which would be made up of six magistrates from the Council of State and the Court of Appeals, three representatives of the National Assembly, three senators from the upper house of Parliament and a technical expert. ... The only judicial oversight is a provision that allows the commission to lodge a complaint with the Council of State, but lawyers are doubtful that it could be convened on a routine basis." We previously discussed news that ISPs may leave France in protest if the bill was passed. Now we'll know shortly if those ISPs will live up to their word.
The bill decrees that hosting providers and Internet service providers in France must be equipped with a "black box" that can retain all digital communications from customers. "The new law would create a 13-member National Commission to Control Intelligence Techniques, which would be made up of six magistrates from the Council of State and the Court of Appeals, three representatives of the National Assembly, three senators from the upper house of Parliament and a technical expert. ... The only judicial oversight is a provision that allows the commission to lodge a complaint with the Council of State, but lawyers are doubtful that it could be convened on a routine basis." We previously discussed news that ISPs may leave France in protest if the bill was passed. Now we'll know shortly if those ISPs will live up to their word.
Only the National Assembly has voted; the bill must also pass the Senate. That said, given the multipartite consensus on it, there's not much chance that the Senate won't pass it.
You never know, though: given that the Senate is often deemed useless (in France, the Assembly has priority), sometimes it attempts to actually work on the bills, debate in more depth.
Also, the bill has been submitted to the Constitutional Council (which is unusual, before it's voted on). They too can veto it. We'll see.
Sorry for the vocab nazi-ism but I see this one very frequently and it's finally pushed me over the edge.
It's toe the line. As in "conforming to the order of things by putting your toes on the line like everyone else".
How does "tow the line" make sense? Is fishing somehow conformist?
hell, name ANY religion that has changed even one bit since its creation.
I'm going to ignore the rest of your post (sorry, not jumping into THAT quagmire) and nitpick the above. The answer is "pretty much all of them." In fact, it's especially odd that you said this in a post about islam, which claims that their god is the same god ("of abraham and isaac") worshiped by both the christians and the jews. If that's not enough example of a change for you, when's the last time you saw a bunch of orthodox jews sacrifice an animal to yahweh? I won't even go into the changes that roman catholicism has seen over the last two millennia, but suffice to say that the current pope would probably be burned for heresy by his predecessors of just a century or two ago.
Religions, like everything, change over time. Changes can be small, or large, but they're always there.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?