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Deutsch: Französisches LOPPSI 2 Gesetz – Internet sperren oder nicht sperren
The members of the Law Commission of the French National Assembly have issued their first amendments to LOPPSI 2 draft law that is to be discussed in the Assembly starting with 9 February 2010.
If adopted as such, the law will oblige ISPs to block the access to the sites included on a list established by the French administration without any judicial control, under the pretext of the protection of children. "When the need to fight against the dissemination of images and representations of minors according to the provisions of article 227-23 of the criminal code justifies it, the administrative authority notifies the persons mentioned at item 1 (i.e.ISPs) the Internet addresses of online public communication services that are subject to the provisions of this article for which these persons must prevent the access without delay" says article 4 of the law.
Some of the amendments proposed by the Law Commission refer exactly to this law article. The amendment submitted by deputies Patrick Braouzec and Michel Vaxès actually proposes the deletion of the article arguing that it does not really solve the child pornography issue. They even argued that this approach could be a mistake as filtering will allow hiding the evolution of the phenomenon. They also consider that anyway those who perform child pornography crimes and disseminate such content on the Internet are very capable of getting around any filtering techniques by using crypting and anonimisation methods thus being "paradoxically, better protected". The two opponents also argued that the filtering measures are against the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Council if they eliminate the judicial authority from the process. Also, in their opinion, the system attacks the network neutrality and filtering should be applied at the level of the computers such as parental filtering software.
Deputies Lionel Tardy and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan submitted two separate but similar amendments. While the first is asking for an agreement from the judicial authority before the application of filtering techniques ordered by the administrative authority to ISPs, the second proposes the elimination of the administrative authority from the process to be replaced entirely by the judicial one.
Lionel Tardy also proposes to force the administrative authority to specify to the ISPs which are the filtering techniques they can use to block paedophilic sites. "The law must not resume to ordering the blocking of the access to certain Internet sites, but indicate to ISPs what techniques they may use. The obligation they bear should be an obligation of means and for that, the means that can be put in force must be listed" said the deputy.
The inefficiency of the filtering technique has been revealed several times by many experts and as was proven by a recent report issued in November last year "Internet Blocking: Balancing Cybercrime Responses in Democratic Societies." The study concludes that the blocking measures are ineffective. Many technical ways exist to get around blocking technologies. More importantly, the blocking measures are intrusive and often abuse fundamental freedoms.
Similar arguments on over-blocking were raised by Aurélien Boch from Internet users association OBEDI who explained: "when an address is filtered, all the sites hosted by the same server will be filtered whether it is the site of Nouvel Observateur or a pornographic site." He also pointed out that "as the list will be secret, it will be impossible to verify which sites are filtered".
Loppsi : the first amendments on Internet filtering (only in French,
25.01.2010)
http://www.numerama.com/magazine/14925-loppsi-les-premiers-amendements...
Draft law on orientation and programming for internal security (n° 1697)-
Amendements received by the Commission for Laws of the National Assembly
(only in French)
http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/13/pdf/amendements_commissions/cloi/...
Loppsi law programmed on 9 February in the National Assembly (only in
French, 25.01.2010)
http://www.numerama.com/magazine/14880-la-loi-loppsi-programmee-le-9-f...
Loppsi law arrives on the Assembly's desks (only in French, 21.01.2010)
http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/actualites/politique/20100120.OBS4210/l...
EDRi-gram: Internet blocking gets a red card ! (4.11.2009)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number7.19/internet-blocking-report
EDRi-gram: France: CNIL's opinion on LOPPSI draft law (29.07.2009)
http://www.edri.org/edri-gram/number7.15/cnil-opinion-opssi