

France announces crackdown on people reading extremist Web sites - dctoedt
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/22/us-france-crime-idUSBRE82I07N20120322

======
victork2
I am French and that smells bad, really bad. This is the kind of law or rules
that are born in the heat of the moment; these "think 'bout the children"
moments. What happened in France is really sad, but it is what it is: an act
by an isolated person. This is not a repeated pattern that needs a law to
solve it.

I am very far from being an extremist but I have consulted websites that are
considered extremist, just because sometimes I stumble on them while browsing
the internet, or just by curiosity, because I think I ought to "know my
enemies". The definition of extremist is also very blurry, and will probably
be abused in the future.

~~~
fab13n
In all fairness, the title is misleading, if not disingenuous.

\- An announce has been made by a president who's not so likely to be
reelected next month. If he's kicked, his law proposals are moot.

\- This president has a compulsive habit of making dramatic/populist announces
right after impressive crimes made the news; he made this one a couple of
hours after a terrorist has been killed in a botched arrest.

\- Most of these announces are never followed through; when they are, the
_Conseil Constitutionnel_ often cancels or neuters them for
unconstitutionality; disproportion between the intended effect and the
restrictions on freedom of speech is a legitimate cause of unconstitutionality
(cf. e.g. the recently cancelled law about the Armenian genocide);

\- The French parliament is in vacancy until it will be reelected, about one
month after the President, so no big law can be voted right now.

It would be awful indeed if this law was enabled, but it's quite unlikely to
pass.

~~~
masklinn
> An announce has been made by a president who's not so likely to be reelected
> next month.

W. wasn't so likely to be reelected either...

------
iterationx
If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise we do not
believe in it at all. -Chomsky

------
NelsonMinar
When I was in France recently trying to use free WiFi I was required to enter
my name, address, mobile phone number, etc on several of them. I have a
screenshot of one captive portal page here:
<https://twitter.com/#!/nelson/status/178533010302451712>

"Because of January 23, 2006's law, you have to register to use our wireless
service. In accordance with the anti-terrorist legislation that came into
effect on 23/01/2006, we are obliged to record the identities of users. The
data collected in this form will be shared with the National Commission on
Data Processing and Liberties and will not be used for commercial purposes or
sold to third parties without your prior consent."

I probably used 20 different WiFi nodes in France and I'd say about 4 of them
tried to collect contact data like this.

More info on the law here: <http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.1/frenchlaw>

~~~
nakkiel
Filling bogus information, is actually illegal.

Either ways, the National Commission on Data Processing and Liberties is your
friend in the story (CNIL in French). They go to great length to regulate
access to your data. There are several cases of national agencies being forced
to collect less data thanks to them.

------
suprgeek
"From now on, any person who habitually consults websites that advocate
terrorism or that call for hate and violence will be punished"

Who defines "habitually", "advocates Terrorism" "call for hate and Violence"?

These terms and phrases are so overtly broad that a person visiting Reddit
could easily qualify.

If the French govt. really moves a law along these lines, they would have
taken a giant step away from Freedom towards Govt. Censorship of the worst
kind.

I suspect this is just some pre-election bluster from Sarko to bump up his bad
numbers. If and when this gets to the Law making stage, France needs a SOPA-
style movement to kill this dead.

~~~
tomjen3
Hopefully - otherwise any french subscribers to /r/beatingwomen are going to
jail.

In this case though, Sarko should 'just' have banned muslim propaganda, since
the perp was muslim.

~~~
rsheridan6
He's probably going to use it as an excuse to suppress his Lepeniste enemies,
even though they had nothing to do with it. They were pretty careful to call
for the suppression of "hate" in general, not Al-Qaeda or anything that has to
do with this gunman in particular. Maybe this doesn't translate well but in
English, "hate" is a term of abuse for right-wing attitudes.

------
jakeonthemove
Well, this has the potential to snowball if implemented...

That said, I've always been amazed at how people can go to another country,
live and work there for years and yet speak in their own language (and not
understand the local one) and refer to local citizens as "they; these; those",
as if they're not part of the local culture. It may be hard assimilating, but
the saying "When in Rome, do as the Romans" is true - in time, you end up
being a Roman.

This resentment builds up, that's how you end up with terrorists and other
malevolent people...

------
riffraff
I am not an expert of french politics but this looks clearly as a play to the
coming elections. And as most election-driven declarations it's overly stupid,
and will probably never be implemented.

~~~
stfu
This has so much conspiracy potential. It is all to familiar: Conservative
politician down in the polls, "Terror" craze happening out of the blue with a
superb timing for the election, that even the FT can't resist from titling
"Sarkozy stands to gain most from arrest...".

~~~
mcantelon
The lone gunman is now dead, etc.

Judging how Sarkozy seems to have dealt with former political rival Dominique
Strauss-Kahn, setting him up with a "rape", it's entirely possibly. French
intelligence likely had the ability to pull strings in the terrorist community
and Sarkozy likely has the ability to pull strings with French intellience.

~~~
mc32
While one may agree or disagree with Sarko, I think the personal history of Mr
DSK would ague against this having been a "set-up". The CIA, MI6 and all the
other covert organs can't do someone as heinous as Assad but on the other hand
they can at will, just pull framed rapes and crazy whackos killing and
terrorizing people to create a desired result?

It reeks of "wanting to believe" as much as a balding man with a hot partner
will "want to believe" the partner is not cheating when all the signs out
there are signaling cheating.

~~~
mcantelon
This article presents a pretty convincing argument for the idea that DSK was
set up:

[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/dec/22/what-
re...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/dec/22/what-really-
happened-dominique-strauss-kahn)

>the two men high-five each other, clap their hands, and do what looks like an
extraordinary dance of celebration that lasts for three minutes.* They are
then shown standing by the service door leading to 45th Street—apparently
waiting for the police to arrive—where they are joined at 2:04 PM by Florian
Schutz, the hotel manager.

>the duty officer at the Accor Group in Paris ... responsible that weekend for
handling emergencies at Accor Group hotels, including the Sofitel in New York
... sent a bizarre e-mail to his friend Colonel Thierry Bourret, the head of
an environment and public health agency, claiming credit for “bringing down”
DSK

~~~
tucson
This has been debunked. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Strauss-
Kahn#Conspi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Strauss-
Kahn#Conspiracy_speculation) "The New York Review of Books subsequently
corrected one of its allegations, reporting that a "dance of celebration"
between two Sofitel employees lasted 13 seconds, not the 3 minutes originally
reported."

~~~
mcantelon
A shorter dance of celebration doesn't debunk the theory as a whole.

~~~
tucson
what is left?

------
dctoedt
FTA, quoting French president Nicolas Sarkozy, in the wake of the death of the
guy who confessed to murdering schoolkids and soldiers: " _From now on, any
person who habitually consults websites that advocate terrorism or that call
for hate and violence will be punished._ "

~~~
yaix
It's election time.

------
adnam
From Wikipedia: _striking just below the knee cap with a tendon hammer
produces a signal which travels back to the spinal cord and synapses (without
interneurons) at the level of L4 in the spinal cord, completely independent of
higher centres._

------
blendergasket
France announces crackdown on people not using VPNs/TOR to access extremist
websites.

In other news a lightbulb went off in the mind of yet another hacker, this
time in France, who decided to devote his time to liberating the internet from
the draconian control of governments and large corporations and working toward
a censorship resistant infrastructure.

------
JumpCrisscross
This is a predictable reaction from an incumbent one month away from a
competitive election. It is not a failure of democracy for one arm of
government to react like this - it's a failure if that populist whiplash
becomes policy (or is debated seriously enough to spook).

An analogy would be October 2012, Romney is hot on Obama's heels, and a
shooter goes on a rampage in Times Square. It would not be unexpected for the
President to call for greater monitoring, no limits to what will be done to
safeguard the American people, yada, yada. Norway's reaction was anomalous in
the shooter being Norwegian and the political climate being mellower than
France in an election year.

------
noarchy
It may be temporary, but Marine Le Pen's campaign web site seems to be down at
the moment. It would be easy to see her benefiting from the inevitable fervour
over this loony gunman. Sarkozy would love to have a bit of that for himself,
hence his seemingly-reckless statement.

------
fchollet
Well it's just one more dumb thing said by Sarkozy. In a month he won't be
president anymore, just ignore him already. I don't see the crime of "reading
a website" being punished in this country any time soon.

------
nextparadigms
This is no different than banning/censoring books for "extremist content". It
will start with terrorism and a few months later it will expand to other
topics, and we all know that's going to happen. Next in line is probably
copyright infringement, because that's a favorite topic of Sarkozy.

When exactly are the upcoming elections, so French people can get rid of
Sarkozy once and for all?

------
geuis
The title of this story is "Gunman dies in hail of bullets as French siege
ends" and has absolutely nothing to do with the throw-away line that the
submitter used.

Do not editorialize submissions on HN. This is not Digg.

~~~
dctoedt
OP here; I quoted the relevant part in the first comment.

~~~
geuis
From the guidelines <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

"You can make up a new title if you want, but if you put gratuitous editorial
spin on it, the editors may rewrite it."

"Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or
exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an
article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's
important."

------
J3L2404
Isn't free speech a constitutional right there?

~~~
mahmud
It's illegal in France to deny an atrocity acknowledged by the State. If the
government calls something genocide or a heinous crime, it's illegal for a
citizen NOT to agree. It was meant to reign in holocoust deniers, making it
illegal. Then it was used as a political pawn against Turkey, viz Ottoman
crimes against Armenians.

In Britain two women are in court demanding their right to wear a cross to
work.

In Germany it's even illegal to salute the German flag, or borders on social
taboo.

Europe .. it's fucked, but it's better than the U.S.

~~~
arcaseus
The law making it illegal to deny the Armenian genocide has been invalidated
by the constitutional council. The decision is quite interesting actually: \-
It is right to forbid denying the holocaust, as it has been recognised by an
international jurisdiction (the Nuremberg court) \- But it is wrong to forbid
the Armenian genocide because it has been declared a genocide directly by the
French government, so it could be used to censor anything. It seems a weird
choice to me(I'm French), but it makes some sense. ([http://www.conseil-
constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionne...](http://www.conseil-
constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionnel/francais/les-decisions/acces-par-
date/decisions-depuis-1959/2012/2012-647-dc/decision-n-2012-647-dc-
du-28-fevrier-2012.104949.html) \-- in French legalese)

Also, free speech isn't absolute even in the US, for example I think you must
also have libel laws.

~~~
coward_anon
How can it be right to forbid denying anything whatsoever? That is thought
crime pure and simple. Just because an "international jurisdiction"
"recognised" it, doesn't mean a) they got it right and b) new evidence may not
come up thus calling for a re-assessment of the whole thing. History is
science, nothing is undeniable in science.

