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French Bill Carries 5-Year Jail Sentence For Company Refusals To Decrypt Data For Police (dailydot.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the mandated-backdoors dept.

Patrick O'Neill writes: Employees of companies in France that refuse to decrypt data for police can go to prison for five years under new legislation from conservative legislators, Agence France-Presse reports. The punishment for refusing to hand over access to encrypted data is a five year jail sentence and $380,000 fine. Telecom companies would face their own penalties, including up to two years in jail. M. Pierre Lellouche, a French Republican, singled out American encryption in particular. "They deliberately use the argument of public freedoms to make money knowing full well that the encryption used to drug traffickers, to serious [criminals] and especially to terrorists. It is unacceptable that the state loses any control over encryption and, in fact, be the subject of manipulation by U.S. multinationals."

4 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Re:not entirely wrong by BitterOak · · Score: 4, Informative

    here's the funny thing, he was the Ambassador to France from 1776 to 1785 and he couldn't talk any sense into them.

    Ummm, that's not quite true. He did persuade them to help the Americans in their Revolution. Without that French help, we might be under the British encryption laws right now, which aren't really much better than the proposed French law!

    --
    If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
  2. Proposal by manu0601 · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is not a signed law, this is a proposal, from opposition. And even if it passes, it also need to pass in the senate.

  3. Re:It matters. Justice Breyer "The Court & the by tsotha · · Score: 3, Informative

    Breyer's view on international standards for US law is considered a fringe view.

  4. Re:Fuck French Government by AlterEager · · Score: 4, Informative

    Look, I know this is slashdot, so what I'm proposing may seem radical, but RTFA.

    The new proposal echoes a bill from January 2016 that would have mandated “backdoors” into encryption in France. That backdoor bill, championed by Conservatives in the French legislature, was defeated and criticized by the current government of Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

    The new punitive legislation, which is also being criticized by the Valls government, is an amendment to a larger penal reform bill. Like its predecessor, it's unclear that this amendment will make it through to law.

    This is an amendment proposed by "Les Republicans", the opposition party, and will be rejected by the majority socialist group in the assembly. The government is against this amendment.

    Who is the fool who should be fucked?