14 DAY TRIAL // 2014 has so far been a year of online surveillance scandals, and it appears that the same trend is very likely to be continued in the next 12 months, as more countries are going more or less in the same direction and are adopting laws that make it perfectly legal to spy on local Internet users.
The latest in this series is France, which approved a new surveillance law on Christmas Eve, that allows the government to collect details about local users, including IP addresses, locations, duration and timing of connections, list of numbers called and callers, as well as device information, be they laptops, tablets, or phones.
The law was originally proposed in 2013, but the government only approved it on Christmas Eve, French publication Le Point reveals in its online version.
Unsurprisingly, the new law has already caused protests across the country and many have criticized the government for its attempt to spy on its users, but it seems like nothing can be changed right now and the law is supposed to come into effect as initially planned, on January 1, 2015.
New body to monitor data collection
Basically, the majority of users are afraid that, with this law, the government would start spying on pretty much everyone without letting them know first, which might violate a recent ruling of the European Union's top court, which decided that enforcing communications companies to collect data about their customers is illegal.
The French government, however, has created a new body with the goal of monitoring data collection in order to make sure that everything is done in a perfectly legal manner.
The so-called National Control Commission for Security Interceptions (CNCIS) can indeed ask for information about data requests, but it's not allowed to issue sanctions or contact governing bodies in case it does find any violation of the law.
Similar cases in other European countries too
Romania and Austria are two other European countries and members of the EU that attempted to enact surveillance laws, but in both cases the proposal ended up being rejected sooner or later.
In Austria, a local court decided that the online surveillance regulation was violating article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which claims that residents of any European Union country need to be guaranteed the right to respect of private and family life.
In Romania, on the other hand, the Senate already approved the law, but it was soon after that submitted by the opposition party to the Constitution Court, where it's expected to be analyzed in early 2015.