Orange redirects error by the visitors of Google to the ministry of the Interior – The Figaro

The american search engine has been replaced by a page usually reserved for sites of terrorist propaganda are blocked by the government.

“You have been redirected to this page of the department of the Interior, because you have attempted to connect to a site whose content incites acts of terrorism or publicly condoning acts of terrorism.” This morning, subscribers to the Internet offerings of Orange have had the surprise to find this message when trying to connect to Google.fr. The website Wikipedia was also affected. This strange redirection has been observed by several people browsing on their smartphone or computer. The Figaro was able to confirm the inaccessibility of Google.fr around 11 in the morning on a phone using the Orange network, but has not accessed the page warning. Contacted by the Figaro Orange has confirmed the incident, and provided for a total recovery around 11: 30. The telecom operator French has more than 20 million customers on mobile, and almost 11 million on fixed computer. Google has assured that the problem was not from him. This error will have cost more than an hour of inaccessibility. One of its French rivals, Qwant, took the opportunity to make his promotion.

Since February 2015, an administrative authority to ask the Internet service providers (ISPS) to block a website glorifying terrorism, without going through a judge, in the framework of the law against terrorism adopted at the end of 2014. This measure is also valid for the sites of child pornography. Last year, France has blocked access to 60 sites of terrorist propaganda, and 223 sites of child pornography. In the case of a site judged as “provoking them to acts of terrorism or in making the apology”, the visitors in France are redirected to a page of the ministry of the Interior. It is this redirection that has been made by error to the address “google.fr” and “wikipedia.fr” by Orange during the update of the list of blocked sites.

In France, the gendarmes and police of the OCLCTIC (central office for fight against crime related to information technology and communication) that support the administrative block. Their actions are in theory controlled by a person qualified and designated by the Cnil. Despite these precautions, the measure had been highly criticized by the defenders of freedoms online, which compared to a censorship of the Internet.