On human rights day Edward Snowden appeared by video link at an event organised by Amnesty International, le Monde, Mediaparte and Arte in Paris. The event, which was simultaneously translated, marks the first time Edward Snowden has spoken live to an audience in France.

Reacting to the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report into CIA torture programmes, Edward Snowden told his audience that the things that we did as a result of this programme are inexcusable crimes. And what we see is quite dangerous in the United States debate.

Google can identify and transcribe all the views it has of street numbers in less than an hour, thanks to a neural network that’s just as good as human operators. Now its engineers reveal how they developed it. Google Street View has become an essential part of the online mapping experience.

It allows users to drop down to street level to see the local area in photographic detail. But it’s also a useful resource for Google as well. The company uses the images to read house numbers and match them to their geolocation. This physically locates the position of each building in its database.

French data protection watchdog CNIL fined Google 150,000 euros for ignoring its three-month deadline to align its practice of tracking and storing user information with the country’s law.

"The company does not sufficiently inform its users of the conditions in which their personal data are processed, nor of the purposes of this processing," CNIL said in a statement.

The watchdog also ruled that Google must publish its decision on google.fr for a period of 48 hours within eight days of being notified of the ruling.

France, the cradle of democracy, legitimized surveillance of its citizens without trial.

According to a new law, security services and the government will authorize to monitor Internet users and subscribers of mobile operators.

The law allows authorities, including the police, anti-terrorism agencies and some ministries to organize direct surveillance of any user of the Internet.