Whistleblowers shielded under new French law
Intelligence personnel may share information exposing authority’s abuse of power
If American whistleblower Edward Snowden were French, he would have had a good chance of remaining a free man — despite having leaked thousands of classified intelligence documents to international media.
Whereas both Democratic and Republican U.S. lawmakers have repeatedly emphasized that Snowden and other similar whistleblowers should face punishment, French members of parliament have taken the opposite stance. The French passed an amendment Thursday that legalizes the leak of information by intelligence employees if they want to expose an abuse of power by their own authorities. “The Snowden case has demonstrated the need to create conditions so that agents can denounce abuses by the intelligence services,” Jean-Jacques Urvoas, the amendment’s author, was quoted as saying by French radio station France Inter.
According to Urvoas, the amendment is supposed to provide “legal protection to an agent of the intelligence services who would denounce illegal intelligence-gathering or abusive supervision.”
To prevent the uncontrolled leaking of sensitive information, the French action creates a new authority to examine leaked documents. Instead of persecuting the whistleblower, officials would be empowered to investigate abuses of power of the French state. If intelligence officers follow this procedure, they may not “be punished or subjected to discrimination,” the amendment says. But if whistleblowers avoid the new authority and send their information directly to the media, they would still be committing an illegal act.
The French government, as well as the conservative UMP party, tried to prevent the bill from passing. One conservative member of the national assembly called the amendment “a risk to the stability of the intelligence services.”
Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said respect for hierarchies was crucial to the functioning of intelligence services. By allowing future whistleblowers to legally avoid adhering to this hierarchy, France’s national security could be seriously threatened, according to French newspaper Ouest France.
France has taken efforts to step up its surveillance amid an increasing fear of terrorist attacks on French soil. The plots that targeted the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in January have alarmed the country’s politicians. A recently passed intelligence bill has been criticized for allowing the government to collect data from millions of ordinary citizens.