France votes to penalize companies for refusing to decrypt devices, messages

(credit: Richard Ying et Tangui Morlier)

French parliamentarians have adopted an amendment to a penal reform bill that would punish companies like Apple that refuse to provide decrypted versions of messages their products have encrypted. The Guardian reports: "The controversial amendment, drafted by the rightwing opposition, stipulates that a private company which refuses to hand over encrypted data to an investigating authority would face up to five years in jail and a €350,000 (£270,000) fine."

This is only the bill's first reading, and the final fate of the amendment is uncertain. Earlier this year, the French government rejected crypto backdoors as "the wrong solution." "Given the government’s reluctance to take on the big phone companies in this way, it remains to be seen whether the thrust of the amendment can survive the lengthy parliamentary process that remains before the bill becomes law," The Guardian writes.

Amendment 90 (original in French) is just one of several proposals that sought to impose stiff penalties on companies that refused to cooperate with the authorities. As the French site Numerama notes, even harsher proposals were rejected. For example, Amendments 532 and 533 suggested imposing a fine of €1,000,000 (£770,000) on companies that refused to decrypt messages.

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