French government wants the power to block social media and to tap into cellphones

• Protests have rocked France for more than a week after police killed a 17-year-old of North African descent.
• President Macron has said his government needs the authority to block social media to curb protests.

Soon after news broke that French police killed a 17-year-old of North African descent on June 27, protests broke out across the country. Those protests have sometimes turned violent. Protesters have set cars and buildings alight. Police have arrested thousands.

In the middle of all this, critics say the government led by French President Emmanuel Macron has taken an authoritarian pivot.

First, on July 4, during a meeting with mayors, Macron suggested the government needs the authority to regulate or block social media platforms during major protests.

A government spokesperson later claimed Macron could have meant to suggest just blocking certain functions on social media platforms, such as Snapchat maps, in order to curb protesters' ability to organize gatherings, the Washington Post reported.

Then, French lawmakers on July 5 authorized police to surveil suspects by accessing their device's GPS, camera, and microphone with a judge's permission, the national newspaper Le Monde reported. The measure is part of a larger bill on judicial reform that is now making its way through the French parliament.

The measure raises "serious concerns over infringements of fundamental liberties," advocates with the digital rights group La Quadrature du Net said, according to Le Monde.

Meanwhile, Eliska Pirkova, a senior policy analyst at Access Now — a digital rights advocacy organization — called the suggestion of blocking social media "a strong blow to democracy," according to the Post.

Both left- and right-leaning lawmakers, meanwhile, characterized the comments about blocking social media made by Macron, who is considered centrist, as anti-democratic. Even members of Macron's own party, the Renaissance Party, are calling the suggested policy a mistake, according to the Washington Post.

There is no country in Europe that completely blocks any social media, the Washington Post reports, but countries like Spain, Belarus, Turkey, and Ukraine have placed limits on its use.

Elsewhere in the world, social media censorship has increased in recent years.

In an effort to stop people from gathering to protest COVID-19 restrictions, the Chinese government censored discussion of certain cities on social media, according to the BBC. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch reports that Russia has placed immense pressure on social media companies operating in the country to censor posts that government officials deem "illegal." These posts include calls to protest, according to the watchdog organization.

Similar police access to geolocation data and live cameras is an ongoing issue in the US digital policy sphere.

While a 2018 Supreme Court case limited police's ability to use location data without a judge's oversight, the Wall Street Journal reported that the federal government has been able to sidestep this ruling by purchasing users' data from marketing firms. For example, in February 2020, the Department of Homeland Security pulled location data from cellphone applications for use in immigration and border enforcement, according to the Journal.

American police are also using private cameras like Amazon's Ring for surveillance. And in November 2022, the city of San Francisco enacted an ordinance allowing police to request access to live feeds from internet-connected home security cameras, the New York Times reported.