From Pirates To Protesters, France Keeps Reaching For The Internet’s Choke Points

Back during the Arab Spring in 2011, in which youth protests against various governments were celebrated in much of the Western World, we saw countries like Egypt move to shut down the internet in an effort to keep the public from communicating. I've been thinking about that a lot while following a series of stories regarding France, a democratic country, that has been undergoing a series of protests across the country. There were three separate stories I saw that paint quite an alarming picture of how France is willing to attack the internet.

The first story actually has nothing (directly) to do with the protests, but matters just as much. On October 22nd, the Swiss non-profit DNS resolver organization Quad9 announced they needed to leave France altogether. The issue wasn't about protests, but copyright (the world's most popular censorship law). Quad9 has been targeted before by copyright holders who demand that its DNS not resolve certain sites they claim are pirate" sites. This time it was beIN Sports, a Qatari-based company that operates a bunch of sports channels around the world. They sued Quad9 in France because some pirate streams were operating from some websites and people could reach them via Quad9's resolver.

To be clear, Quad9 had nothing to do with these pirate sites or streams. It didn't host them. It didn't carry any of their traffic or streams. All it did was answer when people asked where is thisrandomwebsite.com?" by pointing them to the website they had asked about. But to beIN Sports, this had to be stopped. And a French court agreed. But Quad9 noted there was no reasonable way to enforce this on just French users, meaning a Qatari sports broadcaster could effectively break a fundamental part of the internet (asking a resolver where do I find this domain?") for everyone. Quad9 pointed out that they can't abide by this:

We cannot comply with this ruling over the long term while remaining faithful to our mission to protect your privacy, defend you against cyber threats, and preserve the integrity of the internet. For us, recursive DNS resolution is a neutral and passive service. We categorically refuse to alter or lie to you about the DNS responses you receive in a way that opposes your expectations.

This ruling forces an untenable position upon us. Compliance is technically unfeasible, and implementation directly contradicts our mandate to serve the public. As a result, we have made the difficult decision to withdraw Quad9 services from France as of Tuesday, November 24. We deeply regret that French internet users will be left without an alternative that can adequately protect their cybersecurity while remaining compliant with European privacy law.

This seems bad for people who want (1) a functioning internet and (2) a safe internet, since that's what Quad9 provides. But it is what happens when governments hunt up and down the network stack to find the choke points they can control.

That takes us to the second story. That same day - October 22nd - the French Prime Minister's office sent a confidential letter" to basically all of the French mobile operators, asking them to get ready to block TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and X if the protests got too out of hand. Basically, the French government was prepping a slightly more targeted version of what Hosni Mubarak's government did in Egypt during the Arab Spring - though thankfully, not yet implemented.

The link above, from CircleID, points out that the telcos pointed out that this was a bad plan:

During an October 23 meeting, telecommunications representatives reportedly warned that implementing geographically targeted DNS restrictions on short notice would be difficult. They also noted that virtual private networks and alternative DNS resolvers could circumvent such filtering.

That last line is what connects the two stories for me. The telcos pointing out that people will get around any such DNS blocks by using alternative DNS resolvers." You know, like Quad9, the alternative DNS resolver that just announced it's leaving the country entirely due to stupid copyright laws.

But France was not done. On October 26th, a new Amendment" was submitted in the Senate, which would allow government officials - with no judicial review - to order platforms to pull down certain content the government objects to, specifically around what the government claims is incitement" to violence, theft, destruction or sexual assault. If the specific content remained online for one hour, the government authorities could escalate (again with no judicial review) and order the entire site to be blocked (DNS again) and to have it removed entirely from search engines. After some concerns, a softened" version was passed, though it is expected to be challenged. It still requires takedowns and still without judicial review, though one single government bureaucrat will be charged with reviewing all the takedown demands.

This came just a few days after the French government demanded that employees from six different websites, including TikTok and eBay get lectured in person by government officials about steps they needed to take to stop people from using the internet to organize protests. If you're wondering why eBay (not necessarily a hotbed of protest organizations) was included, apparently the government feared that if shops were looted, the looters would try to sell their ill-gained goods via eBay.

The companies apparently agreed to act as an investigative arm of the French government, according to Serge Papin, France's minister for small and medium-size enterprises":

Platforms agreed to forward reports to investigators, monitor ads for goods stolen specifically during the protests, and send the government reports of their actions, with the first one coming within 48 hours, according to Papin.

Three different stories, but all an example of the same basic thing: the French government using key internet choke points to try to exert control over how people used the internet, whether it's to watch sports streams, organize protests, or sell off some looted goods. This is part of the reason I've been warning about how centralized platforms become targets of governments for control.

It's good to see Quad9 push back and say that it will not give in, but would rather leave the country instead. But that's a real loss for the people of France. And, yes, there is no doubt that some people are breaking the law. But the answer to that cannot be well, just get the internet to shut it down," because that path leads to the end of the open internet entirely.

It's also a reminder of how closely linked copyright law and site blocking" legislation are to direct government censorship of speech. They're really two sides of the same coin.

But what's most striking to me in all of this is that when Egypt and other countries sought to shut down the internet in response to the Arab Spring in 2011, many other countries around the globe spoke up about the importance and power of the internet to allow young activists to communicate and organize. But here we are, just a decade and a half later, and it's a democracy like France reaching for the same tools, and there's been very little public outcry or discussion outside of France. During the Arab Spring, the world was watching. Now, it's just another day when a government looks to commandeer the internet's choke points.