French intelligence and government officials will be able to spy on internet users in real time and without authorisation, under a law passed on Wednesday, reports The Guardian.
The legislation, which was approved almost unnoticed, will enable a wide range of public officials including police, gendarmes, intelligence and anti-terrorist agencies as well as several government ministries to monitor computer, tablet and smartphone use directly.
The spying clause, part of a new military programming law, comes just weeks after France, which considers individual privacy a pillar of human rights, expressed outrage at revelations that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had been intercepting phone calls in France. The president, François Hollande, expressed his "extreme reprobation".
Article 13 of the new law will allow not just the security forces but intelligence services from the defence, interior, economy and budget ministries to see "electronic and digital communications" in real time to discover who is connected to whom, what they are communicating and where they are.
Despite concerns over the infringement of personal liberties, and the possibility of abuse of the blanket justification for snooping for the "prevention of crime", the military programming law cleared its final hurdle on Wednesday after members of the Sénat, the upper house of parliament, voted by 164 to 146 on Wednesday. The bill was earlier approved in the lower house, the Assemblée Nationale, by a similar majority.
An amendment rejecting article 13, tabled by senators from the Ecology party, was thrown out.
Read more of this report from The Guardian.