EU ‘encryption law’ sought

3 held in France in Aug for planning attacks: min

PARIS, Aug 23, (Agencies): France and Germany said they want to compel operators of mobile messaging services to allow access to encrypted content to aid terrorism investigations, joining forces after a series of deadly attacks in both countries.

French intelligence services, on high alert since attackers killed scores of civilians in Paris in November and in Nice in July, are struggling to intercept messages from Islamist militants.

Many of the groups now favour encrypted messaging services over mainstream social media, with jihadist Islamic State a big user of such apps, investigators in several countries have said.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the European Commission should draft a law obliging operators to cooperate in judicial investigations into tracking down terrorists.

“If such legislation was adopted, this would allow us to impose obligations at the European level on non-cooperative operators,” he told a joint conference with his German counterpart in Paris.

Cazeneuve singled out the app operated by Telegram, which he said did not cooperate with governments, adding that legislation should target both EU and non-EU companies. A spokesman for Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Telegram, founded by Russian Pavel Durov in 2013 and incorporated in several jurisdictions, promotes itself as ultrasecure because it encrypts all data from the start of transmission to the finish.

A number of other services, including Facebook Inc’s WhatsApp, say they have similar capabilities.

Cazeneuve’s initiative, which he hinted at earlier this month, has come under fire from privacy and digital experts, who warned against opening “backdoors” that would let governments read content.

“How could we then prevent terrorists from creating their own encrypted apps and as a consequence enjoy a higher level of security than users who have nothing to hide?” experts including the head of France’s CNIL privacy watchdog wrote in a comment piece in Le Monde on Monday.

“Cracking down on encryption for the wider public would therefore give a monopoly on its usage to organisations that would abuse it.”

Meanwhile, seven people with links to terrorist networks, at least three of whom were planning attacks, have been arrested in France this month, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Tuesday.

Cazeneuve said at a press conference that French police had arrested as many people for terror links in the first half of 2016 as for the whole of last year.

He gave no details of the latest arrests, however.

On Aug 8, a 16-year-old girl from the Paris suburb of Melun was remanded in custody on charges of planning a jihadist attack.

The teenager was an administrator of a group on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app that was used by two jihadists to plan the murder of a priest in Normandy in July.

Propaganda

According to investigators, she “relayed numerous Islamic State group propaganda messages calling for attacks” and also expressed a personal desire to “take action”.

Cazeneuve and his German counterpart Thomas de Maiziere on Tuesday asked the European Commission to consider legal measures that could be taken against the operators of encrypted messaging services such as Telegram.

After a meeting between the two ministers, Cazeneuve said such legislation could “impose obligations on operators who show themselves to be non-cooperative, in particular when it comes to withdrawing illegal content or decrypting messages as part of an investigation.”

Meanwhile a 19-year-old from the Riviera city of Nice — who was born to a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses but converted to Islam — was on Tuesday sentenced to three years in prison for glorifying terrorism.

In related news, Islamist attacks have scared off thousands of tourists from Paris and its top attractions, helping rob the region of about 750 million euros ($850 million) in revenues, officials said on Tuesday.

Strikes and floods have also taken their toll, overshadowing the boost from the Euro 2016 soccer championships and leaving the tourism industry in need of massive new investment and a rescue package, they added.

“It’s time to realise that the tourism sector is going through an industrial disaster,” the head of the Paris region tourist board, Frederic Valletoux, said in a statement.

Visitors to the Arc de Triomphe fell more than a third in the first half of 2016 from the same period a year earlier, the board added.

The Grand Palais museum reported a 43.9 percent slump and the Palace of Versailles, outside the city, just short of 20 percent.

“Hotels are already laying off staff though they’re not saying it. This industry is on its knees and it needs relief measures now. Hoteliers need the arms to fight back,” Georges Panayotis, head of hotel research firm MKG group, told Reuters.

Hotel revenues were down 15 percent this summer in the Paris region, he said. Wealthier tourists were staying away in even greater numbers, with high-end hotels reporting of declines of between 30-40 percent.

Targeted VAT cuts and other tax breaks could be part of the answer, he added.

Tourism typically provides more than 7 percent of France’s gross domestic product, at a time when the country is trying to boost its economy.

But it has had to contend with a series of disasters, from Islamic State attacks that killed 130 people in Paris last year to the carnage when a gunman drove a truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in the Riviera city of Nice this July.

“The Nice attack derailed our hopes of a recovery. It’s a dramatic situation and there will be job cuts in the sector if things do not get better by the end of the year,” Christian Navet, head of the UMIH-Paris-Ile-de-France hotel federation, said.

The numbers of Japanese visitors had almost halved in the first half of the year from last, according to tourist board figures. Russians had fallen by more than a third and Chinese by almost a fifth.

Weak activity in France contributed to a fall in first-half operating profit for French group AccorHotels. Air FranceKLM has said it expects its unit revenues to decline in July and August, partly due to the situation in France.

Only massive new investments would help to protect jobs in the sector, said the tourist board’s Frederic Valletoux, urging Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault to meet with local tourism officials.

“This is no longer the time for communication campaigns but to set up a relief plan,” he added.