France

A counterterrorism bill before the French parliament would provide overly broad and vague powers that would breach rights to free movement and expression, Human Rights Watch has said. The bill, proposed by the French government in July 2014 under an accelerated procedure, was adopted by the National Assembly in September and is now before the senate. The bill would introduce new measures such as...

There have been repeated cyberattacks on Paris-based news website Rue89 and members of its staff and their families have been harassed since the site published a profile of an Internet hacker last month. Rue89 on July 29 published a profile by Benoit Le Corre of a self-described "militant Zionist" hacker, identified as a French national named Gregory Chelli, who says he is based in the Israeli...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has welcomed this week’s decision by the French Senate to reject a bill that would have had made it a crime to deny that there was a genocide of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915. “There is of course no question of denying the reality of the Armenian genocide, but we think this proposed law threatened personal freedom,” RSF said....

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed concern over the decision of French authorities on the second stage of enforcement of the controversial HADOPI law, under which Internet users suspected of illegal file-sharing could end up having their Internet connection suspended. After starting to send warning emails on October 5, the authorities have announced that...

A member of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's administration has that Sarkozy wanted to gather representatives of Internet operators from each of the G8 countries prior to the upcoming international summit. That summit, which is currently slated for May 26-27, is to be held in Deauville, in northern France, according to Deutsche Welle. "The idea is that representatives from each G8 nation should...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed concern that the French government and parliament seem deaf to the concerns being voiced by civil society about a proposed domestic security law known as LOPPSI 2 and the threat it poses to online freedom of expression. “Despite all the criticism from free speech groups and certain legislators and despite reports showing...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) says it has received several calls from journalists complaining of the difficulties they have had in covering the ongoing street protests against the government’s pension reform plans. A Canal+ reporter was hit repeatedly by members of the CRS riot police in Paris on October 17. On the grounds of an alleged “invasion of the privacy”...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expresses concern over the negative impact that a French national security bill known as LOPPSI 2 could have on online free expression. The version of the bill that was passed by the Senate on first reading on September 10 envisages an ineffective and dangerous online filtering system that could jeopardise the work of journalists...

France's newspapers are kept in a state of "permanent artificial respiration" by the annual billion euros in state aid they get and badly need to shake themselves up to survive, a report said Thursday. The government-commissioned report lamented that the massive subsidies had failed to create the "emergence or the presence of political and general press titles that were strong and not dependent on...

An upstart online news service has led the way in investigating France's latest political funding scandal, defying President Nicolas Sarkozy's efforts to stamp his influence on the media, says a Reuters report. The Mediapart website has published a stream of embarrassing reports of alleged cash donations by France's richest woman, Liliane Bettencourt, to conservative politicians, and meddling in...