Latest in France
The French foreign minister has made a trip to Iraq to attempt to make a deal to try foreign fighters in the country. The plan faces diplomatic obstacles abroad and opposition at home.
Since its November 2018 announcement of the Paris Call, a code of conduct for cyber space, France has turned to the offensive. On Jan. 18, French armed forces minister Florence Parly unveiled the country’s first doctrine for offensive cyber operations.
Introduction
French General Secretary for Defense and National Security Louis Gautier presented the French Cyberdefense Strategic Review on Feb. 12 at Station F (the world’s biggest startup campus in Paris).
French President-elect Emmanuel Macron has a lot on his mind as he prepares to assume office. One topic we can be sure he’s thinking about: what to do about the dumping of various of his campaign documents and emails online just hours before the election.
On Friday, February 19, the Constitutional Council upheld two articles of the state-of-emergency law—meeting bans and warrantless searches—as constitutional, but struck down a provision allowing the police to copy data when conducting such searches. Separately, the French Parliament extended the state of emergency through the end of May.
Editor’s Note: Terrorism's biggest impact is rarely in the violence of the attack itself. Rather, it is the government’s response -- for better or for worse -- that often determines whether a terrorist attack will succeed on a strategic level. Looking at the November attacks in Paris, Colin Geraghty of Georgetown argues that the French government is moving in the wrong direction, playing into the narrative of the Islamic State and making the terrorism problem worse in the long-run.
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In 2013, in the early days of the Snowden leaks, Harvard Law School professor and former Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith reflected on the increase in NSA surveillance post 9/11. He wrote:
Yesterday, French President François Hollande signed into law a bill that extends the state of emergency for three months and expands the government’s already broad police powers. Passed in haste, the law avoided a preliminary constitutional review. Meanwhile, the government has urged other far-reaching legal and policy changes to enhance counterterrorism.
Editor’s Note: For over a decade, the Islamic State and its predecessors focused almost exclusively on Iraq, Syria, and their neighbors. The downing of the Russian airplane over the Sinai Peninsula and especially the recent killing spree in Paris suggest that the Islamic State is now going global. Jennifer Williams, long my Lawfare colleague and now at Vox, explains why I and other terrorism experts may have missed this change.
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