France votes for Internet filter

The French National Assembly has agreed with a controversial Internet filter, reports Webwereld. The filter is designed as a weapon in the fight against child pornography. Critics fear that the means do not fit the end and that the filter makes society vulnerable for extravagant surveillance.

The filter is part of the Loppsi 2 bill, that aims to better enable French police to fight serious crime in the online environment.

If the bill is passed, French police can more easily tap Internet connections in a child porn investigation. Furthermore, they get the authority to order ISPs to filter suspicious content.

The bill modernises French law with respect to the Internet. Online identity theft becomes an offence and punishment on credit card theft or cloning becomes more severe.

A sizeable majority of the National Assembly approved the bill. The Senate will shortly attend to it.

Not everyone is satisfied with the proposal. Criticism is voiced, mainly at the left end of the political spectrum. Opponents call it draconian and ineffective. As child porn is mostly distributed via p2p networks in an encrypted fashion, critics don’t expect much result from blocking sites. Furthermore, they think the filter is too generic: on a notice, sites will be blocked entirely.

The bill doesn’t mention a periodic actualisation of the list with suspected sites. Critics would welcome a periodic review by a court to see whether placement on the list is still warranted.

Critics fear that the filter will not just be used to fight child porn and might represent a new step in an increasingly repressive attitude of the French government regarding Internet.

17 February 2010