France To Open Preliminary Investigation About PRISM Program

An anonymous reader writes "Paris' prosecutor office opened a preliminary investigation after a complaint by two human rights associations who hope to determine the roles played by companies in the PRISM program. Two million communications (phone calls, SMS and mails) are said to have been intercepted in France by U.S. agencies."

Re:It's a farce

[oneandoneis2]

No. There are a lot of things - like medical information - that must be kept confidential, by law.

There's no excuse, no "but terrorists" claims, that get around this: If you've obtained (and, worse, stored) such confidential information, you've broken the law.

It's black and white, and even if the US just shrugs and ignores any verdict, no European organisation will be able to do so: If it's proved that confidential data is being snooped on by the USA, then there's no alternative but to switch to a system that they can't eavesdrop on.

This is something I keep trying to highlight about the whole PRISM thing: It doesn't matter if public opinion is mostly "I have nothing to hide so the NSA doesn't matter", the number of European organisations that are going to have to take action to put their data where it can't be snooped on is going to be *massive*. Whether out of desire for their own privacy, or out of a legal duty to maintain confidentiality, if PRISM doesn't go away, a huge chunk of internet traffic will have no choice but to pull entirely out of the USA. It could even be big enough to require a "second Internet" outside of US control just to get some semblance of privacy back.

Think about it - Governments, health organisations, insurance companies, banks... the number of really big organisations that are legally obliged to keep at least some data confidential is huge. They cannot ignore PRISM, they *have* to keep their data from being spied on.

Re:Human Rights voliations

[TheRaven64]

They most likely won't go after the USA, but after corporations that cooperated with the NSA. Given that these are lots of big companies and very few of them are paying much (if any) tax in Europe, there's likely to be little public opposition to very large fines on such entities and hopefully it will mean that companies like Google can then go to members of the US government and say 'this NSA activity is costing the US economy billions of dollars a year and we'll be reminding your constituents of this and the fact that you supported it at the next election'.