All it took was one article on the front page of the newspaper. The world in March 1974 so that a state scandal broke out leading to the creation of the CNIL as we know it today.
“ Safari, or the hunt for the French “, was the title of the article that readers of the newspaper The world were able to discover March 21, 1974, 50 years ago. He revealed the existence of a project “ computerization and standardization » aimed at facilitating the work of agents of the Ministry of the Interior. A sort of database of citizens listed in files.
It didn’t take much for the scandal to escalate to the highest levels of state and it was the Prime Minister at the time, Pierre Messmer, who took charge of putting out the fire by nipping this project in the bud. In the process, he ordered the creation of a commission to establish a legal framework for the use of this information. Four years later, on January 6, 1978, the “information technology and freedoms” law was passed. This is how the National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties was created and will still play the role of digital policeman in 2024.
At the origins of the CNIL, an internal request for modernization from INSEE and already concerns about the private lives of the French
50 years later, the CNIL still in charge cannot avoid abuses
This system of computerization of files may well have frightened the most refractory or visionary people of the 1970s, but it still made some progress. This is how after the deletion of General Information, replaced by the criticized EDVIGE file, which will give way to two specific information files. More recently, the STIC and the FNAEG will also be created. All these files will be dubbed by the CNIL.
The Commission has today evolved and is turning more towards organizations than people. A slow transition from public to private, with more precise data, even intrusive in some cases, since most companies hold confidential personal information.
While computerization and new technologies facilitate the work of state agents under the eye of its digital policeman, the abuses feared at the time of the Safari project have unfortunately come true. Apart from the numerous information that we give every day by accepting, for example, cookies from the websites that we visit, or our data that companies resell, current events remind us that the computerization of data has also given rise to the cybercriminality. The recent cyberattack on France Travail, which exposed the personal data of more than 40 million French people, is proof of this.
Source : The world
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