SREN Law: Free Internet in Danger
The «Securing and Regulating the Digital Space» (SREN) law, voted on and introduced in 2024, poses a serious threat to individual liberties. By reinforcing state intervention, it endangers the fundamental principles of human rights and could signal the end of a free internet.
Risk of Censorship
Although the Constitutional Council censored the article introducing the offense of online contempt, the SREN law maintains worrying measures. The Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (Arcom) can order the blocking of websites without prior judicial decision, which constitutes a form of administrative censorship. This type of discretionary power is frequently used in authoritarian regimes, under the pretext of combating disinformation and hate, to arbitrarily censor opponents, independent journalists, or dissenting voices. This precedent opens a dangerous breach by granting excessive power to the administration.
End of Anonymity
The law imposes age verification for accessing certain content, leading to the end of anonymity on the internet. Users will now be forced to reveal their identity to access platforms, even for perfectly legal content. This obligation raises enormous privacy concerns, both with regard to companies, which will accumulate more sensitive data, and the State, which thus acquires new means of mass surveillance. In a world where data leaks, administrative abuses, and privacy attacks by companies and states are already frequent, this centralization of personal information constitutes a serious deviation.
SREN also provides for the removal of certain online content within 24 hours, without judicial intervention. Even ignoring the fears associated with state abuse of this power, this automated censorship inevitably leads to excessive deletions out of fear of sanctions, thus compromising freedom of expression. Platforms, to avoid any penalties, will adopt a strategy of maximum precaution, deleting much lawful content deemed potentially controversial. Public debate and the diversity of opinions will be profoundly impoverished.
Perverse Effect
A perverse effect of this regulation is that the restrictions imposed on legal platforms—such as identity checks, administrative blocks, and intrusive technical obligations—push users towards less moderated networks, even towards the dark web. These spaces escape all norms and expose users to illicit content and services, scams, or much more serious cyber threats. By over-regulating and thus overburdening otherwise legitimate sites, the law produces the opposite effect: a migration of internet users to uncontrolled, uncontrollable, and much more dangerous digital zones.
The SREN law constitutes a direct attack on fundamental freedoms. Under the guise of protection, it gives the State mechanisms for surveillance and control incompatible with a free society. Increased vigilance and strong opposition to authoritarian policies are now essential in the face of increasingly erosion-of-human-rights-oriented regulations.
A text by Pascal Obscur for the Libertarian Party.