France's Assemblée Nationale on Wednesday, March 27, adopted a bill to counter foreign interference including the use of an experimental algorithm to monitor suspicious activity. The bill, put forward by President Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party, received the approval of 171 lawmakers, with just 25 against. The Sénat now has to give its green light.

Algorithm-based online surveillance has existed in France since 2015, but has only so far been used to hunt down potential "terrorists." This new law would expand the practice to pinpoint potential perpetrators of foreign interference during a four-year test period.

Renaissance lawmaker Sacha Houlié has argued that while the method had mixed results in the "anti-terror" fight, it could be more useful to ferret out foreign agents after suspicious activity. He gave the example of a "Chinese agent who arrives in France, makes bookings in several hotels then cancels them, then makes some more and cancels them too." He did not provide more details.

Left-wing lawmakers expressed concern that this could lead to long-term intrusion into the private lives of ordinary people. "You are setting up tools for the generalized surveillance of the population," warned Antoine Léaument from the radical left La France Insoumise (LFI) party.

The law would also require people lobbying for foreign interests to sign up to a registry, with sanctions for those who did not. These foreign entities would include non-EU foreign powers, firms of which half or more are foreign-owned or -funded, and foreign political parties. The bill also lays out the possibility of freezing the financial assets of people, firms or entities found to have engaged in foreign interference.

In November, the French parliamentary intelligence committee said France faced an "omnipresent and lasting threat" of foreign interference. It called for new legislation, saying the current tools at the disposal of intelligence services were not sufficient to counter threats in the long term. The intelligence committee pointed to large-scale information manipulation campaigns, saying they amounted to a "new form of foreign interference" and stressing their "unprecedented scale."