France is working hard to avoid becoming a digital colony of the United States or China. Both the French National Assembly (the First Chamber of the French Parliament) and the Ministry of Defense have announced that their digital devices will stop using Google's search engine and replace it with Qwant, a French and German search engine Proud not to follow its users.
"Security and digital sovereignty are at stake here," said Florian Bachelet, one of the deputies who heads the Cyber Security Task Force and the Digital Society of the National Assembly, launched in April to help protect French companies and government agencies from cyber attacks and growing dependence on foreign companies. We have to set an example for companies. "
This increasingly hostile anti-technology trend is rising among French politicians.
A few days ago, French Minister of State for Digital Affairs Munir Mahjoubi responded to the United States' Cloud Technology Act, a new law that allows the United States access to data stored on the cloud services of US companies wherever they are in the world.
Mahjoubi said France was already preparing to respond with other European countries to the repercussions of this law.
The concept of "digital sovereignty" is relatively new, and can simply be summarized as a country defense to regain control of its data and the data of its citizens. On the military side, this includes the ability of a country to develop offensive and defensive cyber security capabilities without relying on foreign-made technology. In its economic context, issues ranging from taxing large-scale technology to the creation of local startups.
The concept of national sovereignty emerged in 2013, when the CIA agent Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA had spied on foreign leaders and had an important ability to access data filled with private companies' fascinations. It was a wake-up call to French politicians.
The Senate report warned in the same year that France and the European Union would become "digital colonies" - a term French government officials and analysts have used since then to warn about the threat posed by the United States and China to economic, political and technological sovereignty issues.
French President Emmanuel Macaron has been particularly vocal about restoring France's independence from foreign technology companies - especially on data protection issues - that show the opposition of dominant US and Chinese companies and their government's policies on digital issues.
"If we do not organize the Internet, the risk lies at the heart of democracy," McCron said on November 12. "If we do not organize corporate relationships with data, what is the purpose of a democratically elected government?"