Conversations on WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, and Olvid will be able to continue to be confidential. On the night of Thursday, March 20 to Friday, March 21, the National Assembly finally rejected, after a rare blackout and amid some commotion, the amendments that aimed to reinstate a controversial article of the bill aimed at combating drug trafficking.
This article (8 ter), supported by Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, aimed to force encrypted messaging services to share messages exchanged on these platforms with law enforcement, for the purpose of combating serious crime – messages to which neither the platform itself nor the investigation services have access, due to encryption. On this type of messaging, only the sender and the recipient have a key that allows the exchanged messages to be decrypted.
The article introduced by the Senate, already deleted by the Law Commission
In practice, the provision wanted to force WhatsApp, Signal, Olvid, Proton, Telegram and other encrypted messaging services to install backdoors, for the purposes of "fighting crime" and organized crime. The text, adopted in the Senate, had provoked an outcry from a heterogeneous group of opponents of This type of measure, including encrypted messaging and services, electronic device manufacturers, the digital business lobby in France, EuroCloud, but also the CNIL, parliamentarians, and the digital rights defense association, La Quadrature du Net.
They emphasized that it was impossible to install a backdoor exclusively reserved for law enforcement: the door would also be used by hackers and foreign intelligence services. The message had been heard by the National Assembly's Law Commission, which studies the text before it is debated in the Chamber. The latter had already voted for its deletion two weeks earlier – almost unanimously.
But deputies had subsequently tabled three amendments, aimed at reintroducing this provision, with additional safeguards. Bruno Retailleau and the director of the DGSI also spoke out to defend the measure.
Without success: the return of Article 8 ter was rejected by the National Assembly by a very large majority, after heated debates and a rather agitated session. In the Chamber, tensions reached their peak when the system that allows the vote to be calculated broke down, forcing Naïma Moutchou, the vice-president of the National Assembly, to resort to another, more laborious form of voting. Each of the deputies present had to position themselves for or against the text, directly into the microphone. In the end, only 24 votes were cast for it, 119 votes were cast against it.
Source: Broadcast of the session of the National Assembly on Thursday, March 20, 2025
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