French ministry of interior presents controversial LOPPSI 2 draft law on internal security, focus on new technologies

After a year and a half of discussions, Minister of Interior Michèle Alliot-Marie finally presented the draft law for the “programming and performance of internal security” (Loppsi) to the Council of Ministers on the 27th of May.

In 2002 the government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin proposed LOPS (Law of Orientation and Programming for Internal Security), which formalized the use of police files such as ‘STIC’ and ‘Judex’, which were merged later into Ariane. Some of the provisions of the law were approved later in 2003 by the LSI (Internal Security Act), proposed by Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior. LOPPSI 2 is intended to update the policy for internal security in France for the period 2009-2013. Seven years after its previous edition, the new law focuses especially on the use of new technologies.

Article 4 foresees the blocking of internet sites that contain child pornography. The ministry of interior will transmit their blacklist of banned sites to ISP’s, which have to block the access to the “internet addresses”. The measure is controversial as it opens again the discussion in France on the potential of organized screening of the internet by the government through the ISP’s.

Article 10 allows for the creation of the ‘Pericles’ database which will bring together information from various existing French databases as STIC and Judex to create a “super-dossier” on people.

Article 17 would broaden the use of surveillance substantially. Untill now the use of videosurveillance was restricted to locations which could be exposed to acts of terrorism, but with the new proposal camera’s private entities would be able to establish a sort of CCTV mechanism in order to protect their premises against acts of agression or theft.

Consequently, the viewing of these images can now also be done by private entities.

Article 20 would better protect the identies of intelligence agents and police officials, as well as some of their informers by allowing them to use a false identities and even use this identity for testimonies in court. (Practically this would mean that if the Rainbow Warrior case happened today, the names of the two arrested agents would never have come out.)

Last but not least, the most controversial Article 23 is intended to bring wiretapping to the 21st century by authorizing the collection of data “from a distance”. If passed, investigators would be able to see and record in real time, from a distance, the data that appears on a computerscreen, even when the data are not stored. The law would allow the state to install keylogger software that can “observe, collect, record, save, and transmit” keystrokes from computers on which it is installed. In essence, it allows for government-installed Trojans for a period of four months; a judge can extend this period for four months more. (In the US, the FBI has used similar techniques for several years, installing a program called CIPAV on suspects’ computers to record and transmit “pen register” data back to investigators.)

The measure can only be done after authorization by the investigation magistrate, after consultation with the ‘procureur de la Republique’.

The bill will probably be discussed in Parliament next fall.