DOI: 10.25136/2409-7543.2018.1.25276

Abstract: In 2015 - 2017 the French Republic was shaken by a series of terrorist attacks and hundreds of deaths. Of course, those crimes happened for many reasons including imperfection of the national security system. One of the steps towards improving the national security system was the expansion of competences of the French police and internal intelligence agencies to restrict a constitutional right to personal privacy in France. The methodological basis of the research implies the dialectical research method, systems analysis, formal law and comparative law methods, etc. The novelty of the research is caused by the fact that the author describes a French model of restriction of rights to negotiation secrecy as well as particularities of control over activity performed by special services and law-enforcement agencies in this sphere. The author concludes that presently France practices two mechanisms of restriction of the right to personal privacy, administrative mechanism (interceptions administratives, interceptions de sécurité) and criminal procedure (interceptions judiciaires). Noteworthy that the procedure of administrative seizure and the mechanism of control over using technical intelligence equipment for administrative purposes create grounds for abuse of the law by French law-enforcement agencies and special services because they could interefere with negotiations or talks of any individual disregarding the fact whether there is a proof of his or her implication in a crime. 

DOI: 10.7256/2409-7543.2016.6.21005

Abstract: Since the late 20th century the views of the political leadership of France on the problems of defense and security have been formulated in the “White Papers” (Livre Blanc). There have been issued four White Papers on Defense and National Security (1972, 1994, 2008, 2013) and one White Paper on Domestic Security against Terrorism in 2006. The research subject includes the views of the political leadership of France on the key issues of the national security protection. The chronological framework of the study covers the period from 1972 till the present time. The research methodology is based on the dialectical method of cognition, the concrete historical approach, the system analysis, the formal-legal and comparative-legal methods. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the consistent exposition of the key provisions of the fundamental documents of the French Republic on the issues of the national security and defense, the analysis of the causes and consequences of their transformation and the formulation of the possible prospects of their development. The author concludes that the representatives of French political elite are under a serious influence of American political thought. This dependence manifests itself both in the closeness of the ideas, set forth in the fundamental documents, and in the use of the experience of organization and activities of intelligence agencies.