La Quadrature du Net

14 November 2018 - Two months ago, the European Commission published a proposal for a Regulation on terrorist censorship. We denounced it, explaining that this project would destroy the entire decentralized Web. Since then, we have met the French Ministries in charge of the file: our fears have increased.

France, with the support of Germany and the European Parliament, will do everything to prevent a democratic debate on this text: the government does not talk about it in the press, wants to force its urgent adoption and invokes "national security secrets" to avoid any facts-based debate.

Why so many secrets? Probably because this text, written with Google and Facebook, will submit the whole Web to these giants, to whom the State is already selling out its role in the fight against terrorism online. The collaboration announced on Monday by Macron between the State and Facebook is just a small, but revealing, step towards such a broader alliance.

Civil rights groups worry France is taking a step toward a surveillance state. It is about to become the first European Union country to introduce facial recognition software for government services. [...]

But that's exactly what Alicem doesn't do, according to Martin Drago. He's a legal expert at La Quadrature du Net, a group that defends digital rights and civil liberties and which is suing the government at France's highest court of appeals.