Title: You're not a terrorist? Who cares.
Date: 2017-10-05 00:30

![Two policemen, back, in front of the Eiffel Tower]({static}/images/emergency_state.jpg)

The France is in a [perpetual state of emergency]({filename}/misc/im_scared.md) since two
years, and the current government is planning to end this, by transferring it
directly into the law. This was [adopted by the Assembly](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41493707) with 415 voices for,
and 127 against, yesterday.

The new measures will allow the police to conduct house raids and to carry
searches without judicial oversight, when they want to, even in the middle of
the night. It can also place people under house arrest, forbid them show up at
some places, pat them down, check their identity, without any kind of judicial
oversight.

If there is a new attack, it's because we aren't though enough; if there are
none, it's because we have tough measures that we should keep in place forever.
It sounds like a [Shadok](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Shadoks) proverb.

The judiciary power is weakened, the executive empowered, because
apparently, our deputies forgot to read [Montesquieu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers)
about the separation of powers (the tl;dr being "the closest they are,
the closer you are from a dictatorship").

The government spokesman, [Christophe Castaner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christophe_Castaner#Secretary_of_State_loaded_relations_with_the_Parliament.2C_the_Government_Spokesman) declared:

> Et donc moi je considère, pour ce qui me concerne, que je n'ai pas à avoir
> peur des moyens de vérification et de lutte contre le terrorisme parce que je
> me sens pas terroriste

That can be roughly translated as:

> And so I consider, that personally, I don't have to be afraid of the means
> of surveillance and war against terrorism, because I don't feel myself
> like a terrorist.

He completely misses the point.

Since 2015, the beginning of the state of
emergency, there have been 6.000 house raids, for 41 indictments, this is a
success rate of less than 0.7%; meaning that (at least) 5.959 non-terrorist-people
had to endure a search of their house.

Everyone is worried that those laws might be overkill, costly, inefficient,
against the rule of law, the constitution, basic human rights, and used for
anything else but terrorism (COP21 protesters were arrested thanks to the state
of emergency last year). We are worried because there is a shift from punishing
people for crime that they did, to preventing those that they may possible
commit.

Not feeling like a terrorist is precisely why we're worried, because we might
be subject to arbitrary human right violations, not by the terrorists
themselves, but by the State itself, or the **fucking police**.  You know, the
one that votes far-right by [more than
50%](http://ses.ens-lyon.fr/actualites/rapports-etudes-et-4-pages/la-dynamique-du-front-national-cevipof-decembre-2015--289724?RH=40),
[rapes people with batons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_French_riots),
[kills, beat and
mutilates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_brutality#France), carries
automatic weapons in crowded places, does illegal ethnic profiling, … and that
is now free from judicial supervision.

Look at what the United State did, striping rights (and the people themselves)
from terrorists, torturing them, killing them, beating them, … because you
know, *the end justifies the means*.  We already did this 60 years ago in
Algeria, on a smaller scale (everything is bigger in America), maybe, just
maybe, we shouldn't do it again, ever.