Cyberbullying, advocacy of terrorism, death threats… Business has multiplied in recent years on social networks. To better fight against hate online, a specialized center will be created within the Paris prosecutor’s office in order in particular to deal in real time with all forms of threats and apologies for terrorism sure internet, explains the Paris prosecutor Rémy Heitz. Interview.
Why create this specialized center?
Faced with the increase in the online dissemination of hate speech, the so-called Avia law had planned to entrust to a single jurisdiction the treatment of certain offenses at the national level. However, it provided for it for a fairly limited scope, namely sexual or moral cyber-harassment aggravated by the discriminatory nature, when the facts gave rise to an online complaint.
Our idea is to cover a wider field and to include all the facts that constitute hate speech.
We must change gear and create a judicial counterpart to the Pharos platform (for reporting illegal content online, Editor’s note) to be faster and deal with a certain number of reports or complaints in real time.
It is not a question of centralizing everything in Paris, some cases must be handled at the local level. But if we want to be effective, we must have a point of centralization to work with Pharos in close and permanent collaboration.
However, the Paris judicial court has a correctional chamber and a section of the prosecution specializing in press law, a matter which is difficult to deal with.
“A delinquency without borders”
Additionally, online hate professionals use cybercrime methods including multiple accounts and addresses. It is a delinquency that no longer knows borders.
Insofar as the Paris prosecutor’s office has a national section dedicated to cybercrime, it is aware of these difficulties and is already in close contact with Pharos to try to trace the perpetrators of offenses.
This project is finally justified by the close proximity of the Paris prosecutor’s office with the national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office (Pnat). The latter is always informed of the facts of defense of terrorism, which allows to cross the elements and to determine with whom one is dealing.
Dealing with these cases requires being reactive and sorting between what may be isolated behaviors without a future and what may constitute weak signals that could announce a passage to the act.
The project has been validated by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice in principle and we are awaiting the staff – three magistrates, a lawyer, two assistants and clerks – to implement this new pole, certainly at the beginning of next year. .
“Let us make our cultural revolution”
A modification of the law of 1881 is sometimes mentioned. Isn’t that a danger for freedom of expression?
It is not normal that certain behaviors, such as hate speech or openly racist remarks, benefit from the protection offered by press law, mainly for the benefit of journalists. Today someone who makes racist remarks publicly or provokes hatred cannot be brought before the prosecution or tried in an immediate appearance.
The code of criminal procedure does not allow rapid prosecution for the offenses provided for in the law of 1881, although we sometimes have to deal with criminal behavior that does not at all fall within the spirit of this law, designed to protect freedom of expression in general and that of the press in particular.
If we want to be efficient and not let these discourses spread, we must know how to adapt these instruments and approach the rules of common law in order to act quickly.
We have to make our cultural revolution, in particular to adapt to the internet and the speed of content distribution.
“Difficulties in obtaining identities”
Are social networks cooperating enough?
The operators – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, the jeuxvideo.com forum, etc. – are obliged to remove clearly hateful content. They also have the obligation to quickly remove child pornography and apologetic content of terrorism. It works well and can prevent rapid diffusion.
But until now, they have not necessarily responded so quickly to requests to provide the identity of the perpetrators, which makes criminal prosecution difficult for lack of identification of the author of the comments.
Some of these operators are governed by a different legal system than ours. When they intend to reveal the identity of the author of a disputed publication or e-mail, they are sometimes confronted with the absence in their rights of infringements corresponding to ours or of a strict right protecting their data. users.
So sometimes we have difficulty getting the information we need and we have to talk to them regularly to find solutions. I also met them very recently and the discussions were extremely fruitful.
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