While recent news in France has been marked by cyberattacks against several ministries, claimed by various groups of hackers reputed to be pro-Russian, the deputies are working, Tuesday March 26 and Wednesday March 27, on a bill from Renaissance deputy Sacha Houlié against foreign interference.

The president of the Law Committee of the National Assembly co-signed the text with his counterpart from the Defense Committee, Thomas Gassilloud, and the deputy Constance Le Grip, author of a parliamentary report on foreign interference, which notably accused the National Front (now National Rally) of having been an “effective transmission belt” for the Kremlin.

The bill intends to establish an obligation for representatives of foreign interests outside the European Union who lobby in France to register on a national register. An idea inspired in particular by the American Foreign Agents Registration Act, with a regime of criminal sanctions for offenders. This register would be managed by the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life (HATVP).

Also read: Raphaël Glucksmann: “We Europeans have been naive, intoxicated and corrupted by Russia”

Sacha Houlié's proposal also plans to expand an algorithmic surveillance system launched in 2015 and intended to identify connections on the Internet, currently limited to the fight against terrorism. It would be an experiment, over a period of four years, allowing the intelligence services to use it under the heading of "national independence", "territorial integrity and national defense", "interests major aspects of foreign policy", "the execution of France's European and international commitments" and the fight against foreign interference.

Too wide a perimeter, according to the left. “We were promised that the first algorithmic control would be on terrorism and that it would never go beyond this area. And once again, what was extraordinary, what was reserved for terrorism, is becoming more and more important. no more step on common law", points out in particular Bastien Lachaud, deputy of La France insoumise.

France 24: Foreign interference is increasingly present in France. How can we fight against them with the law?

Sacha Houlié

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We started from an observation drawn up by the reports of the commission of inquiry led by Constance Le Grip on foreign interference and by the parliamentary intelligence delegation that I chaired from 2022 to 2023: there exists today Today there is a real risk of foreign threats, and this is growing. These threats are of Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Turkish origin with different signatures: the destabilization of democracies through the manipulation of information, fake news, cyberattacks, but also economic predation on our companies or on our academic knowledge.

What we are proposing is to do three things. That we better understand collectively the interferences, that we accustom the entire environment of the representatives of the nation to better understand what we are exposed to with an annual debate in Parliament on the basis of a report submitted by the intelligence services . It is then a question of being able to know the influences in order to be able to reduce them, thanks to a file bringing together all the people who exercise influence in France on behalf of a foreign power. And if we do not comply with this obligation, the text provides for a sufficiently strong criminal sanction which allows in particular the expulsion of foreign nationals.

The other measures directly concern interference, either to freeze the assets and property of natural or legal persons, companies, institutes, think tanks, or to better monitor them. This will be done using an algorithm which will be applied to telephone connection data to report all suspicious behavior and better identify all the people who are likely to engage in espionage in France.

How will this algorithmic surveillance work?

The principle is based on monitoring the Internet connections of people working for foreign powers who behave in ways that could put us on alert. This surveillance already exists in anti-terrorism matters. The idea is to extend it to foreign interference.

We know very well that an agent can, for example, have a process in which he aims to disappear, not to be recognized. For example, he will book lots of hotels and lots of different transport options on apps. He will then cancel and then repeat the procedure several times to try to disappear in the eyes of the intelligence services. This type of attitude will be recognized as suspicious via an algorithm which will be applied to the connection data.

And rather than manually searching for who is who, who is doing what, this suspicious behavior will be spotted and will help the intelligence services. This is essential because it will save a lot of time. There are a lot of people we would like to follow, but we can't right now.

See alsoFrench universities facing foreign interference: a threat taken seriously

The left believes that the scope of this surveillance is too broad and that this poses a problem with regard to public freedoms. What do you answer?

In a context where we are observing very strong aggression from authoritarian regimes towards Western democracies, we need this type of measures. The legal framework that we want to create is very strict. Strict authorization will be required from what is called the National Commission for the Control of Intelligence Techniques (CNCTR) and the minister or Prime Minister will not be able to override this opinion, unless they request an opinion from the Council of State.

I remind you that the goal is to seek out foreign agents who seek to destabilize Western democracies. You and I are obviously not concerned. This algorithmic surveillance will not concern everyone.

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