The abhorrent slaughter of 12 people in Paris, in and around the offices of satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, ostensibly at the hands of two men who appear to be religious extremists, has led to calls for a strong response. Many have pleaded for a peaceful, sensible reaction, for the general public and national governments to uphold the French values of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. Others have taken a more aggressive stance against Islamist terrorism. British tabloid The Sun has already called on the British government to use its surveillance powers so they can intercept communications to stop an apparently inevitable attack on UK soil.  Yet David Davis MP, one of a handful of politicians who has been calling for the UK to scale back its snooping in light of the Edward Snowden revelations, says France itself has shown how invasive and extensive surveillance powers can’t stop appalling acts of barbarism like the one seen yesterday. “France has got the most intrusive [surveillance laws] of any country. That hasn’t protected it,” he tells Forbes.  British tabloid The Sun calls for use of intelligence powers to stop terrorist threat after Paris shootings  In 2013 French paper Le Monderevealed the country’s Directorate General for External Security “systematically” collected “electromagnetic signals from computers or phones in France, as well as flows between French and abroad”. The publication claimed all emails, text messages, telephone records, Facebook messages and Twitter interactions were stored for years. France’s security services also gather up vast amounts of metadata, the information that shows who, where and how people communicate but not the content, according to the report.  “France is an intrusive, almost surveillance state already and it has been for a long time. And yet it didn’t stop what happened and it never can. It’s not possible. When agency chiefs go to the Prime Minister and say, ‘if you don’t do this we can’t guarantee the safety of the British public, of course they can’t whatever [powers they have],” Davis says.  Despite Snowden revealing epic spy campaigns, such as GCHQ’s Tempora, which tapped internet cables and hoovered up masses of metadata for analysis, politicians in the UK barely talk about the issue, according to Davis. He believes the government and the Home Office in particular have rushed through laws, such as DRIPA, so that they can’t be scrutinised by those with a concern for privacy implications. “There’s no time to do any research… But the nature of counter terrorism bills is that they do require a lot of research,” Davis says. “When you accelerate it through, it tells you the government cannot stand up its arguments for too long.”  Meanwhile, it’s unclear just how intelligence agencies are using the law to track potential or real terrorist threats. “The government makes no information available. To the point of stupidity. We do not know what laws are being used to justify … everything.”  The threat of terrorism from the likes of al-Qaeda and ISIS is real, as the Paris tragedy has attested, but the best way to fight it is with targeted, not blanket, surveillance, Davis adds. Just as UK forces were unable to prevent the 7/7 attacks on London, despite tracking thousands of leads over communications infrastructure, France will struggle to prevent further atrocities with even more intrusive powers, he adds.  Relaxing surveillance laws and improving privacy would, surely, be a boon to the legally established right yesterday’s shootings tried to attack: freedom of speech.
David Davis MP says France is almost a surveillance state already and its invasive powers still couldn't stop the massacre of 12 people in Paris. In response to the atrocities, European governments should employ more targeted surveillance, the pro-privacy British politician tells Forbes.