La Quadrature du Net

La Quadrature du Net (Squaring of the Net in French) is a French advocacy group that promotes digital rights and freedoms of citizens. It advocates for French and European legislation to respect the founding principles of the Internet, most notably the free circulation of knowledge. La Quadrature du Net engages in public-policy debates concerning, for instance, freedom of speech, copyright, regulation of telecommunications and online privacy.

The group was founded in 2008 by free software promoters and activists. It gained notoriety by fighting the HADOPI law, a controversial project to establish a graduated response in France. Its action against Internet censorship and Net neutrality led the Quadrature to work on subjects such as the LOPPSI law, the Telecoms Package or ACTA. In 2012 Quadrature spokesman and co-founder Jérémie Zimmermann received a Pioneer award for his action against ACTA.

The Quadrature is supported by other advocacy and free software groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Free Software Foundation.

Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés

The Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL) (French pronunciation: ​[knil]; English: National Commission on Informatics and Liberty) is an independent French administrative regulatory body whose mission is to ensure that data privacy law is applied to the collection, storage, and use of personal data. Its existence was established by the French loi n° 78-17 on Information Technology, Data Files and Civil Liberty of 6 January 1978, and it is the national data protection authority for France. Since September 2011, the CNIL has been chaired by Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin.

History

The CNIL was created partially in response to public outrage against the SAFARI program, which was an attempt by the French government to create a centralized database allowing French citizens to be personally identified by different government services. On March 21, 1974, an article in the newspaper Le Monde, "SAFARI ou la chasse aux Français (SAFARI; or, Hunting Frenchmen) brought public attention to the project. Interior Minister Jacques Chirac, freshly appointed following the events of May 1968, had to face the public uproar. Chirac was the successor to Raymond Marcellin, who had been forced to resign in the end of February 1974 after having attempted to place wiretaps in the offices of the weekly newspaper Le Canard enchaîné. The massive popular rejection of the government's activities in this domain prompted the creation of the CNIL.