PARIS — France’s president proposed a sweeping law Thursday that would see repeat visitors to extremist websites put behind bars, one of several tough measures floated in the wake of a murderous shooting rampage.
The proposed rules, unveiled by Nicolas Sarkozy after the death of an Islamist wanted in a series of execution-style slayings, alarmed journalists and legal experts, who said they risk pulling the plug on free expression.
Sarkozy, who is only a month away from an election, argued that it was time to treat those who browse extremist websites the same way as those who consume child pornography.
“Anyone who regularly consults Internet sites which promote terror or hatred or violence will be sentenced to prison,” he said at a campaign rally in Strasbourg, in eastern France.
“Don’t tell me it’s not possible. What is possible for pedophiles should be possible for trainee terrorists and their supporters, too.”
French law calls for up to two years in prison and about $40,000 in fines for repeat visitors to child-porn sites, although whether the proposed anti-terror rules would carry similar penalties isn’t clear.
When asked, Sarkozy’s office directed a query seeking details to the Ministry of Justice, which didn’t immediately offer clarification.
Some journalists and lawyers were concerned.
“Trying to criminalize a visit — a simple visit — to a website, that’s something that seems disproportionate,” said Lucie Morillon, who runs the new media bureau of journalists’ advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.
“What’s especially worrying for us is how you are going to know who’s looking at what site. Does this announcement mean the installation of a global Internet surveillance system in France?”
Media lawyer Christophe Bigot seconded her concerns, saying that any such law, if passed, would be a serious blow to the democratic credentials of a country that considers itself the home of human rights.
“I don’t see how you can assume that a person who connects [to an extremist website] not only shares the ideas that are being expressed there but is ready to act on them,” Bigot said. “That seems to be a very dangerous shortcut — a real step back in terms of individual liberty.”
Bigot said it wasn’t clear to him to what degree Sarkozy’s proposals were serious. In any case, France’s Parliament isn’t in session, but could be called back for urgent legislation. Otherwise, an eventual law would be contingent on Sarkozy’s re-election.
The tightening presidential race has been upended by the shooting rampage blamed on Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent who purportedly killed three French paratroopers, three Jewish schoolchildren and a rabbi before dying in a violent confrontation with police in the southern French city of Toulouse earlier Thursday.
Morillon said she understood the emotional appeal of a crackdown on online radicalization in the wake of such atrocities.
Still, she said, “you have to be careful not to attack the wrong target.”
“Once more it’s the Internet that’s being blamed, as if the Internet was the source of all evil.”
Front Section, Pages 9 on 03/23/2012