Prime Minister Jean Castex said he will take up the subject of online hatred by creating a “crime of endangering the publication of personal data” on the internet, following the gruesome beheading of Professor Samuel Paty in Paris.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Curfew Exemption Rules That Can Let You Out After 9 p.m.
“We can no longer bring ourselves to passively witness the unleashing of hatred on social networks,” said the PM during questions to the government session, while adding that “The censorship of the Constitutional Council must lead us to take up this subject in another form, which will have to create an offence of endangering the publication of personal data.”
Mr Castex made the move as he believed that it’s good because it was indicated by social networks that Samuel Paty was beheaded, and until now and since January 1, 2002, the “offence of endangering” did not exist and only “the violation of human rights resulting from files or computer processing” was included in the penal code.
Article 226-22 says, “the fact, by any person who has collected, during their recording, classification, transmission or other forms of processing, personal information including the disclosure would have the effect of undermining the consideration of the interested party or the privacy of his private life, of bringing, without the authorization of the interested party, this information to the knowledge of a third party who does not have the quality to receive them is punishable by one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 15,000 euros.”
The teachers of the college of Bois d’Aulne in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on Tuesday expressed deep concern over the impact of social networks after the killing of their colleague.
The “enemy is radical Islamism, it is a permanent threat, a threat which can come from outside, but which can also, I say it bluntly, recruit these killers from among our own compatriots”, he stressed.
“We are also paying the price of relaxation, but today, the time has come for action”, insisted Jean Castex, making “the protection of national education personnel” a “priority”.
Mr Castex said he wants to give additional means to the Ministry of the Interior without further details. “Our intelligence services, which are on the front line on this subject, have been consolidated, reorganized, as never before, and we are going to step up a gear.”
