Paris, 24 June 2015 — It’s a sad day for freedom! French representatives just adopted the French Surveillance Law. As an ironic echo to the recent WikiLeaks revelations about NSA spying on French political authorities, this vote calls for a new type of resistance for citizens.
French National Assembly1French lower legislative chamber has just approved with a large majority the Surveillance Bill, at the end of a steamroller process which was made to prevent any democratic debate. By renouncing to all their obligations to defend the Constitution and citizens’ freedoms, MP validated, in the name of group strategy, widespread surveillance in France.
This catastrophic final vote echoes the joint revelations by WikiLeaks, Mediapart and Libération on US and Five Eyes spying on of all the State structures. Strategic and economic espionage for the governments, massive surveillance for citizens: this is the principle of mass and generalised surveillance which must be denounced, instead of the genuine headlong rush represented by this unjust law. Beside the pretended indignations to spying or the guilty inertia confronting this questioning of liberties by the political authorities, we must, collectively, refuse this escalation of mistrust, suspicion and all-out tapping.
La Quadrature du Net will stay at the center of a number of initiatives aiming at fighting mass surveillance under all its aspects. We will keep putting those who legalise it face to face with their responsibility of the betrayal of the democratic values and our liberties:
- legal action before the French Constitutional Cour (see this statement of case (fr) published yesterday), French Council of State and European institutions;
- sharing knowledge on the techno-political techniques allowing circumventing mass surveillance
- making leaks on surveillance easier and assisting whistleblowers who make them
- all type of happy, joyful and disruptive mode of resistance aiming at blocking the mass surveillance machine and making it more expensive by helping to build communication measures
“Mass surveillance is part of an intolerable and oppressive machine, which is by nature the seed of totalitarianism. We, citizens, must oppose it by all means because it undermines the foundations of our societies! It is a challenge for our individual and collective capacities to organize ourselves, to create, to exercise our liberties and to simply exist” said Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder of La Quadrature du Net
References
| ↑1 | French lower legislative chamber |
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