In all fairness, the title is misleading, if not disingenuous.

- An announce has been made by a president who's not so likely to be reelected next month. If he's kicked, his law proposals are moot.

- This president has a compulsive habit of making dramatic/populist announces right after impressive crimes made the news; he made this one a couple of hours after a terrorist has been killed in a botched arrest.

- Most of these announces are never followed through; when they are, the _Conseil Constitutionnel_ often cancels or neuters them for unconstitutionality; disproportion between the intended effect and the restrictions on freedom of speech is a legitimate cause of unconstitutionality (cf. e.g. the recently cancelled law about the Armenian genocide);

- The French parliament is in vacancy until it will be reelected, about one month after the President, so no big law can be voted right now.

It would be awful indeed if this law was enabled, but it's quite unlikely to pass.

> An announce has been made by a president who's not so likely to be reelected next month.

W. wasn't so likely to be reelected either...

I'm French as well and, quite frankly, I don't see anything special here. It's just business as usual as it has been for the past 5 years. It goes like this:

1) A tragic but isolated incident occurs.

2) Our dear President jumps into action, calls a press conference and, with a dramatic tone of voice, announces that he will pass a new law that will protect us all against this happening again.

3) The media happily reports this. The public is happy - our dear President is looking after us. The media however blissfully ignored the fact that, in French democracy, the President has no power whatsoever to create new laws, let alone to tell Judges who should be punished for what. There is this thing in our constitution called "separation of power" that both our President and the French media seem to be unaware of.

4) What happens next depends on the PR situation:

If another story quickly takes the top spot at the 8 o'clock news programme, the new law proposal is quietly buried by the legislators never to be heard of again.

If a new law really needs to be passed for PR purposes, a new law, comprised of nothing more than a rehash of existing laws, is passed. It's then added to the already huge pile of laws that never get enforced due to lack of resources in our judicial system. The end result is an ever growing and more and more complex set of laws containing an increasing number of redundant and useless laws, resulting in an even slower and inefficient judicial system. Maitre Eolas's blog is worth a read to get a better understanding of what actually happens with these new laws: http://www.maitre-eolas.fr/

So yes, business as usual. I'm sure there are plenty of lessons to be learned here and applied to doing PR in a startup though.

Yes, the reaction is very telling when you compare it to Norway's reaction after the Utøya massacre last summer. Perhaps the difference is that Norway's terrorist attack was by a local - but it seems to me that there is a cultural difference here in how we react to these events. Just look at the knee-jerk reaction blaming everything from rap music to computer games whenever there is a school shooting in the US. These knee-jerk laws are a huge problem for democracy.

Please, don't mix up the "French" with their (our) president ...

Many French people disagree with the "always-in-the-moment" laws of the president. So please, don't try to see a cultural thing where it is not.

Maybe it's my cynism's speaking but I think this is done on purpose. They know it will be easier to pass some nasty laws after these kind of awful events so they take advantage of the situation and bring up these laws they were maybe already thinking about for some times but wouldn't dare to expose. And boummm security++; democracy--; Job well done.

> these "think 'bout the children" moments

Actually in France it's already illegal to visit pedopornographic website. While the intention is good, it can be used as an excuse to get a citizen's browsing history, and it's hard to defend a man's right to see kiddie porn…