French internet censorship rose sharply in 2016
LILLE, France — French authorities ordered the blockage or removal of more than 2,700 websites in 2016, Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux said Tuesday, a spike in censorship that some critics in the tech industry fear will do little to snuff out extremist content online.
Le Roux told a cybersecurity conference in the northern French city of Lille that his government has requested blocks for 834 websites and that 1,929 more be pulled from search engines’ results as part of the fight against “child pornographic and terrorist content.”
“To face an extremely serious terror threat, we’ve given ourselves unprecedented means to reinforce the efficacy of our actions,” he said, also pointing to reinforced online policing units and new forensic laboratories for analyzing digital evidence.
Le Roux didn’t provide a breakdown or other details but the website censorship numbers represent a sharp increase over the figures tracked by France’s online privacy watchdog, known by its French acronym CNIL. In April, CNIL reported that 312 sites were blocked and 855 de-listing requests were made in France between March 11, 2015, and Feb. 29, 2016.