The French police could remotely turn on a phone camera à la ‘1984’

In France they are putting out fires with gasoline. So far in 2023, the largest EU country has seen massive public brawls over pension reforms, then came the mass civic unrests with literal fires and lootings.

Now the French Assembly (the lower house of the French Parliament) has passed a controversial bill that will de facto enable the police to surveil suspects by remotely activating cameras, microphones and GPS location systems on phones and other devices. Earlier version of the bill passed the Senate, and in order to become a law, it’s required to get legislative body’s approval.

Before turning a suspect’s camera from a distance, the law enforcement agents will have to get approval from a judge (via engadget). The newly amended bill is not to be used against journalists, lawyers and some other professions (like MPs and doctors), but nevertheless, these assurances are met with high skepticism from all sides of the public life in France.

The (dystopian) future is now, old man

Promises have been made in the French Assembly: this bill is not to be abused, and it will be limited in use for only ‘serious’ cases, plus up to a six months maximum for a given case. It could be used only for crimes that are punishable by at least five years in prison.

Despite these guarantees, civil liberties activists are uneased and are attacking the bill on grounds of possible privacy abuse. Digital rights group La Quadrature du Net points out that security policies of that sort do have a history of expanding to less serious crimes. The main issue, of course, is that a postulate like ‘serious crime’ could be easily abused and get out of hand.

Éric Dupond-Moretti, the French Justice Minister, tried to calm down the concerned parties, stating that these new powers are to be used in ‘dozens of cases per year’, and that parallels between this bill and the dystopian surveillance state of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ are not to be drawn.

Spy-scandal clouds are gathering

In mid-2021, a huge tech scandal broke out all over the world and overtook the headlines. Pegasus, an Israeli spyware made by NSO Group, was used by the Israeli police for spying on dozens of its own citizens like senior government officials and protesters. Pegasus was able to infiltrate mobile phones and extract sensitive data or activate a camera or microphone to spy on owners. Fast forward two years ahead, in April 2023, there were concerns that another spyware is haunting devices - again iPhones.