The French database sure looks like a prototype. From Anthony Torres at strategic-culture.org:
By setting up a single database centralizing information on the entire French population behind their backs, France’s Socialist Party (PS) government is giving the state vast repressive powers. Coming amid the state of emergency, it constitutes a fundamental threat to democratic rights, in particular to opposition within the working class to austerity and war.
The database, named “Secure Electronic Titles” (TES), was decreed into existence on October 30. It centralizes the personal and bio-metric data of all holders of passports or national identity cards. It concerns over 60 million people, that is, virtually the entire French population. The official launch of the database took place last Tuesday in the Yvelines area and will be extended across France at the beginning of 2017.
The database was prepared in violation of the law, behind the backs of the population. It was first proposed in 2011 at the National Assembly, during a debate on a secure national ID card, and sharply criticized by the National Commission on Information-Processing and Liberties (CNIL). While recognizing as “legitimate the use of bio-metric information to identify a person,” the CNIL ruled that “bio-metric data must be conserved in an individualized data system.”
The new TES replaces and combines a former TES, which contained passport data, and the National Management Database (FNG), which contained ID card data. It also adds data, including a digital photo of the face, fingerprints, eye data, and physical and electronic addresses. These data are conserved for 15 years (for passports) and 20 years (for ID cards).
The TES database violates legal limits on the use of bio-metric data, moreover, since fingerprints and retina scans are indelible and can be used to remotely identify individuals, and not simply authenticate that an individual presenting himself to the state indeed is who he purports to be. In 2012, the Constitutional Council invalidated an attempt to set up a similar database, ruling that such a database would serve not only to authenticate but also to identify individuals.
Thus, by creating the TES database, the PS government of President François Hollande trampled the recommendations of the CNIL and the Constitutional Council’s veto in 2012.
Having created the TES by decree, the government will find it easy to modify its functioning to increase its powers, as was the case for the national DNA database. According to Guillaume Desgens-Pasanau, a magistrate and lecturer and the National Conservatory of Arts and Professions (CNAM), “once the database of 60 million people is there, one can easily add a search function, for instance. It is quite easy, as it is regulated via a decree and therefore does not require new legislation.”
Beyond the risk that TES data could be pirated, the police, gendarmerie, customs and the intelligence services, as well as Interpol, will have access to tools that reinforce pre-existing surveillance infrastructure.
Speaking to Agence France-Presse (AFP), CNIL President Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin described her concerns regarding the TES: “It is very clear that we are not dealing with a database whose ultimate goal is to struggle against identity theft … This large-scale mechanism raises fears that it can be used for other purposes, not today, but in the coming period.”
The attacks on democratic rights, the police-state measures, and the pervasive domestic spying set up by the Hollande administration constitute an immense danger for the working class. A government even further to the right than the PS, armed with such powerful surveillance tools, could easily go even further than Hollande in repressing workers’ opposition to austerity and war.
To continue reading: French Government Creates Illegal Database On Over 60 Million Citizens
