France to file suit against Google, Facebook for mass surveillance
Human rights organizations, namely the Human Rights League and the International Federation for Human Rights have said they will file a lawsuit this Thursday against world internet giants in the case of spying on European citizens by US special services in social media, the Voice of Russia reported.
In early June, the former CIA employee Edward Snowden, who had fled the United States, disclosed a secret US court warrant authorizing US special services’ access to all calls by subscribers to the biggest cell operator Verizon.
Snowden also revealed the National Security Agency top-secret programme PRISM, which helps monitor major communications networks.
One of the lawyers who’ll conduct the case, Emmanuel Daoud, has told the France Presse News Agency that the suit will be filed against John Doe to find out about the role that Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Paltak, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple have played in the data gathering.
He added that the subsidiaries of the companies in question, registered in France, may also become involved in the probe.
The human rights activist believes that these companies are likely to have provided access to their servers to the NSA and FBI in different time periods to collect information about their online customers using the companies’ communications programmes.
France warned in June that it would fine Facebook, Twitter and Google+ unless they bring their privacy policy into line with French Law within three weeks.
The European authorities are concerned about the privacy policy of Google, which brought together the private information of users from its various internet services on March 1st, 2012 and made it easier to use that information.
The EU supervisory bodies have instructed their special-purpose agency to analyze Google’s new policy.
France’s National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties, CNIL, said earlier that Google’s privacy standards are out of line with the European legislation as regards the protection of the users’ personal data.
Related: World Service Authority issues world passport for Snowden
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