When it was revealed that the NSA was spying on the French, the local government was outraged, but it soon turned out that the French intelligence services operated a similar system, with similarly minimal oversight. The United States is now thinking of reining in its spooks due to the public outcry, while the French seem to be expanding the program.

With little public debate, the French legislature approved a bill that may markedly expand electronic surveillance of local residents and businesses. However, this move was buried under a routine military spending bill, which outlined the conditions under which intelligence agencies might have gained access to or record phone conversations, emails, online activity, personal location information and other electronic communications.

The law allows electronic surveillance for a wide range of purposes, like “national security,” “the protection of scientific and economic potential” and “prevention of terrorism or criminality”. The local government argued that the legislation (which doesn’t take effect until 2015) does almost nothing to expand intelligence powers and claimed that the rules in question had been in place for years. The Defense Minister had to admit that the legislation did effectively expand the existing regime and reinforce oversight.

The French government has either staked out rights to a broad new range of surveillance practices, or acknowledged that they have already been collecting far more information, under far less regulated circumstances, than everyone knew about.

The human rights outfits admit that since anything can be placed under the heading “national security”, the authorities could spy on whoever they liked.