> Paris previously pleaded — successfully — in the Council for a bigger carve-out in the media law allowing EU capitals to snoop on reporters, while European lawmakers in their version of the legislation went with stricter exemptions and stronger safeguards to protect journalists.
> In a decree made public today, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne has extended the temporary retention of communications data of all citizens in France for another year. The blanket retention obligation concerns identity data (surname, first name, date and place of birth, postal address(es), e-mail address(es), telephone number(s)) as well as payment information, connection data (IP addresses, port numbers, identification numbers of users and their devices, date, time and duration of each communication, data on supplementary services and their providers) and also the location data of electronic communications of the entire population.
> Over two centuries, France cobbled together a surveillance apparatus capable of intercepting private communications; keeping traffic and localization data for up to a year; storing people’s fingerprints; and monitoring most of the territory with cameras.
> This system, which has faced pushback from digital rights organizations and United Nations experts, will get its spotlight moment at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. In July next year, France will deploy large-scale, real-time, algorithm-supported video surveillance cameras — a first in Europe. (Not included in the plan: facial recognition.)
It's in the last two decades, not centuries. It really started in 2004, but I think the tipping point was Lyon in 2001 with the first security cameras in public space.
As a retired telecom manager, I can assure you that in the 1990' French police were used to make illegal wiretapping.
Unofficial instruction was to be blind when police entered a telecom mainframe (répartiteur)
> Paris previously pleaded — successfully — in the Council for a bigger carve-out in the media law allowing EU capitals to snoop on reporters, while European lawmakers in their version of the legislation went with stricter exemptions and stronger safeguards to protect journalists.