The French government is promoting legislation called the SREN Act, which will require browser providers to block websites on the blacklist provided by the government at the software level.
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It is noticed that this move has aroused concerns and opposition from Mozilla, the parent company of the Firefox browser, and many others, believing that it will have a chilling effect on browsers and the free Internet.
Article 6 of the SREN Act describes the French government’s intention to mandate built-in filtering tools in browsers as a mandatory content blocker.
In a blog post, Mozilla noted that this is fundamentally different from tools like Microsoft Smart Screen, which automatically blocks sites reported as phishing and malware attacks, but users can easily bypass them. The mechanism sought by the French government would completely block any website or platform it believes should be blocked.
The U.K. is currently pushing a similar bill in its parliament, the so-called “Online Security Act,” which would force companies like Microsoft to include government-mandated backdoors in apps with end-to-end encryption, killing WhatsApp, Apps such as Telegram rely on strong encryption methods to protect the privacy of user data, and companies such as WhatsApp and Signal have even threatened to withdraw from the UK market entirely.
