...in my previous post, when I puzzled over the lack of French outrage over the PRISM reports in The Guardian and the Washington Post.
Now that the face of Edward Snowden is attached to the story, there's been some reaction from... ...Marine Le Pen, head of the far-right National Front.
And much like the Glenn Becks and Michael Moores of this world, Le Pen's response is to lionize Snowden (proof that there is often an overlap between extremes of both left and right). She even wants President Francois Hollande - whose administration, as far as I can tell, has offered no real response to or condemnation of the PRISM revelations - to offer Snowden asylum in France (!) in a gesture to show that France is a great "land of liberty".
(Full marks go to Europe 1 radio for actually trying to get a reaction out of French Digital Economy Minister Fleur Pellerin, who said on Monday: "The information that has come out is worrying...But the companies concerned have stated that they were unaware of the programme and did not participate. I think it's too early to form an opinion.")
As I discussed in my previous post, France does not have a great track record in curbing surveillance powers and several recent laws have been attacked by advocacy groups as giving too much power to the authorities to monitor, filter and spy on telecommunications.
Yet the French media are treating this as a kind of distant US story, despite the obvious potential implications for French users of Google, Facebook, etc.
French tech-industry website www.usine-digitale.fr even interestingly posits the theory that French cloud-computing providers will benefit by distancing themselves in terms of security from their U.S. rivals.
In other words, despite the global nature of the Internet and the incredible dominance of U.S. tech companies and websites over the whole planet, the PRISM story may turn national and be a further push for online services to be cut up and balkanized - much like the banking sector in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
But let's wait and see how users react...
Now that the face of Edward Snowden is attached to the story, there's been some reaction from... ...Marine Le Pen, head of the far-right National Front.
And much like the Glenn Becks and Michael Moores of this world, Le Pen's response is to lionize Snowden (proof that there is often an overlap between extremes of both left and right). She even wants President Francois Hollande - whose administration, as far as I can tell, has offered no real response to or condemnation of the PRISM revelations - to offer Snowden asylum in France (!) in a gesture to show that France is a great "land of liberty".
(Full marks go to Europe 1 radio for actually trying to get a reaction out of French Digital Economy Minister Fleur Pellerin, who said on Monday: "The information that has come out is worrying...But the companies concerned have stated that they were unaware of the programme and did not participate. I think it's too early to form an opinion.")
As I discussed in my previous post, France does not have a great track record in curbing surveillance powers and several recent laws have been attacked by advocacy groups as giving too much power to the authorities to monitor, filter and spy on telecommunications.
Yet the French media are treating this as a kind of distant US story, despite the obvious potential implications for French users of Google, Facebook, etc.
French tech-industry website www.usine-digitale.fr even interestingly posits the theory that French cloud-computing providers will benefit by distancing themselves in terms of security from their U.S. rivals.
In other words, despite the global nature of the Internet and the incredible dominance of U.S. tech companies and websites over the whole planet, the PRISM story may turn national and be a further push for online services to be cut up and balkanized - much like the banking sector in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
But let's wait and see how users react...
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