In a well-intentioned yet dangerous move to fight online fraud, France is on the verge of forcing browsers to create a dystopian technical capability. Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill would force browser providers to create the means to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list. Such a move will overturn decades of established content moderation norms and provide a playbook for authoritarian governments that will easily negate the existence of censorship circumvention tools.
While motivated by a legitimate concern, this move to block websites directly within the browser would be disastrous for the open internet and disproportionate to the goals of the legal proposal – fighting fraud. It will also set a worrying precedent and create technical capabilities that other regimes will leverage for far more nefarious purposes. Leveraging existing malware and phishing protection offerings rather than replacing them with government provided, device level block-lists is a far better route to achieve the goals of the legislation.
It’s not just right now : this president has been here since 2017 and most of the core ministers are the same since then.
They have been cracking down on civil liberties from the start, but they make it more and more obvious since 2022 (because there is no re-election possible after 2 terms). Using anti-terrorist special legislatilns against environmental and himan rights activists, making demonstrations repression ever more violent…
At the same time, to guarantee that pseudo-centrist (actually right wing) keep getting elected, they have worked to make the far right more powerful. This way, in every election, they can end up being the “rational” choice.
Exactly. Besides, I really do believe they are stupid enough to believe their bullshit will allow them to keep winning at the polls. I’m not so sure anymore… The fascists are ready and our state is turning a blind eye.